


Matched Set

by Sethrial



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Body Horror, Codependence, Drug Use, Dysphoria, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Self Harm, Slow Burn, Suicide, Twincest, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, kind of, lup isn't much better, taako is a slow motion disaster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:16:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sethrial/pseuds/Sethrial
Summary: Barry knew the twins were a matched set. They looked the same, acted the same, and were impossible to tell apart unless they wanted you to. They went together, fit for each other like two puzzle pieces. It wasn't until Barry got to know them that he realized exactly what that meant.





	1. Barry Bluejeans: the Bluejeananing

**Author's Note:**

> I've tagged everything I can think of and will probably be adding tags in later chapters as I write more and get into some darker territory. If you see anything I haven't tagged send me a message.

The first time Deryll Archwalder met Lup was at an IPRE mixer, just a small party of scientists and crew to welcome some new people and let them get to know the old hands in an informal setting, as Captain Davenport explained to him when he tried to say he didn’t really do parties. He didn’t know anyone there and didn’t really like the drinks, so he wandered around with a cup of soda he wasn’t drinking, looking for someone to talk to. He picked Lup because she was alone, checking her makeup in a mirror in the corner. There was also the fact that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Until then he thought nothing would ever beat the blueprints of the bond engine for sheer perfection, but they had nothing on the tall, slender elf with long blond hair and smooth, nut brown skin. 

“Hi,” he said when he was close enough to not be yelling across the room. “I’m uh. Uh. Um.” She turned to face him and he got his first real look at her. He didn’t use the term ‘jaw dropping’ lightly, but his hit the floor. She was- he didn’t have words to describe her. If he were a poet laureate he would struggle to find a way to capture her beauty and grace. No wonder she was spending time with a mirror instead of the rest of the unbelievably average party. 

“What’s up, bluejeans m’man,” her reflection said. 

Darry did another take. The reflection was looking him up and down while she glanced off at something across the room. There were two jaw dropping elves wearing IPRE robes, not just one. 

“It’s, uh, it’s Darry.” 

“Coo,” said the one he wanted to talk to first. “Lup, Taako.” She pointed at herself and her reflection, respectively. 

“So, Barry, what’s there to do for fun around here?” Taako asked. 

“We’re… at a party?” he tried.

Bzzz, wrong. We’re at a hostage situation.” 

“We’re being held against our will,” 

“by a tiny man in a red jacket,” 

“being forced to do strange and perverted things.” 

Lup was hiding a flask under her robe. She took a drink and passed it to Taako. “You know they tried to make me play pin the tail on the donkey?” 

“You’re straight fucking with me.” Taako sniffed the mouth of the flask. “What is this?” 

“Vodka, and no I’m straight not. Pinned the tail to some fucker’s arm and noped out.” 

“Nice.” They high fived. “Which brings us back to Taako’s original question. Is there anything fun to do in this city? We rolled in yesterday and been doing orientation bull for the last whatever.” 

“There’s a museum that just opened up. They have a great exhibit on-” 

“Wrong again, nerd boy. It’s drink o’clock. Where’s the nearest bar?” 

“I don’t really-” 

Lup wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “You do now. C’mon. Davenport is walking this way and I don’t want another convo about building experiences with the team. Hey, are you on the launch crew?” She swung him around and started walking in the opposite direction, toward the back of the hangar that the party was being held in. The recently completed starblaster was in the center where it could be admired by all the people who had worked so hard to make the dream of interplaner travel a reality. Taako fell into step on her other side, arm linked with hers. 

“Yeah. I’m, uh. I’m the head scientific officer. Where are we going?” 

“Secret exit,” Lup said. 

“That’s an emergency exit. It says it’s alarmed.” 

“Nah,” she said.

“Yup. Mmhmm, maybe.” Taako was nodding. “Hey, Barry, how fast are you?” 

“What?” 

Lup shoved through the door and an alarm started screaming. 

“Told’ja,” Taako yelled over it. Then Lup’s hand was wrapped around Darry’s wrist and he was being dragged along while she and Taako booked it away from the party. They stopped in an alley a short ways away, hiding in the shadows away from the glow of the nearby streetlights. People were streaming out of the hangar, some in a hurry, others still clutching drinks or hors d'oeuvres.    
“Oh good. Fire alarm. We won’t be missed,” Lup said. “Ditch the robes, party people. We’re going incognito.” They stripped out of their robes and shoved them in an empty cardboard box to find again later. 

“You too, bluejeans,” Taako said. He turned out to be a guy when he took off the robe. Hair down to his waist, wearing heels and makeup, but he had none of Lup’s curves when Darry looked at them side by side without baggy robes covering them. He shucked out of his and put it in the box with theirs. 

Lup took her braid down and shook out her hair, Taako wrapped his around his head and pinned it there, and then they looked at each other for a second, considering. They looked slightly less like mirror images, especially when Lup ruffled her hair down to half-cover one eye and Taako wiped his lipstick off on the inside of his sleeve. 

“Perf,” they said at the same time. 

“Okay, so where are we going?” Darry asked. 

“Partying,” Lup said. 

“You never dipped out on a work function? Honestly, Barry, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore.” Taako was checking out the other end of the alley where it opened up on the campus green. “All clear. City lights about a half-whatever that-a-way.” 

The IPRE campus was tiny and settled dead center of a bustling city, so a “half whatever that-a-way” was a few thousand yards in any direction they chose. They went north, judging by the stars, sneaking from shadow to shadow and running in the few well lit patches, and came out on a street full of people and a few wagons. 

The two of them hooked an arm each through both of Darry’s and started walking. He kept pace with their long legs because he honestly didn’t know what else to do. It was his first time out in the city itself, not including a scheduled company trip to the museum and a ghost tour he went on because the lab closed early one night. He’d only been there a few weeks and was working nonstop to get the ship ready, so it wasn’t like he was a hermit hiding out in his room. 

“Do we have a destination? I don’t know my way around too well yet,” he said. 

“Nope,” Taako and Lup said at the same time. 

“Bar somewhere with good music,” Lup added after a second’s thought. 

“And hot guys. Hot guys are a must.” 

“Hot guys always flock to good music.” 

“Other way around, babe. Musicians like hot guys too and play where they go.” 

“Shwatev. Check it.” She nodded at an open door with noise pouring out, mostly the sounds of people talking and laughing, but music under that. There was a group of people standing outside chatting. Some of them were good looking, Darry guessed, because Taako whistled and said “Taako is  _ into it. _ ” 

“I’m not old enough to drink,” Darry whispered to Lup as she dragged him inside.

“Yeah y’are,” she said. 

“What if they ask for my ID?” 

“They won’t.” 

“But what if-” 

She kicked his ankle to shut him up and shoved him onto a bar stool. “Beer?” Lup looked at the boys like she was asking their opinion. “Beer,” she decided, before either of them could say anything. She raised two fingers at the bartender and he was there faster than Darry could blink. “Three beers, whatever’s good on tap.” 

“We have a new summer ale-” 

She interrupted him, “Perfect,” and turned to Darry. “So what do you do for fun?” 

“I, uh, read? I guess. And I work on the ship. I’m heading this new experiment with the bond engine to see if it can run on bonds with animals as well as sapient beings. First I had to get a bunch of people with dogs. Controls were hard, because everyone at the IPRE has some kind of bond already, so we started doing newspaper ads. It worked out because all the people who answer newspaper ads about dogs are, like  _ super  _ close to their dogs. Some of the dogs were really sweet, too. I’m not going to get into the scientific details of the experiment, but long story short, we found out the engine  _ can’t _ work on humaniod-animal bonds. We got a lot of great data though and learned some amazing things about animal psychology while we were at it.” 

While he was talking, Lup leaned out away from the bar to look at Taako behind his back. She mouthed something and he nodded seriously. 

“What are you guys talking about?” Darry asked. 

“Not much. Beer’s here.” 

Darry took a taste of his and fought not to make a face. Beer was terrible. Still, it was his now and he had to drink it, so he did the same as always when he didn’t actually want something, held his nose and drank as much as he could as fast as possible. He downed the glass in about thirty seconds, tried not to spill any down the sides of his face, but a bit leaked out and dripped onto his shirt. It left an aftertaste, too. Gross. 

“Holy shit,” Lup whispered from his right. 

“Aw hell yeah!” Taako yelled. “Chug that shit!” He grabbed his, stood up on the footrest of his stool, and did the same thing. Barry counted twenty seconds. Didn’t spill a drop, either. 

“You guys are idiots,” Lup said.

“Chug, chug, chug,” Taako replied, pounding a fist on the bar. 

“Fuckin’ morons,” she said with an eye roll.

“ _ Chug, chug, chug, chug.”  _

A few other people joined in and before Darry knew what was happening the entire bar was pounding on their tables yelling at Lup to chug her drink. 

“Fine!” she shouted. She stood up the way Taako had and, there was no better way to say it, dumped a pint of beer down her throat. It was gone faster than Darry thought was possible given the nature of fluid dynamics and the diameter of the average person’s throat. She sat down and the bar erupted into applause. Taako high fived her over Darry’s head. 

“I just decided you’re fun,” Taako told him. 

Darry didn’t know what to say to that, so he stayed quiet and tried a sip of the next drink that was put in front of him. It was tiny and fruity and he loved it. 

“And you don’t know how to do a shot. Okay. Less fun now.” He and Lup knocked theirs back in unison and Darry copied them. It burned a little on the way down but was still better than the beer. If he never drank another beer it would be too soon. 

Lup got them a third round of drinks and handed him his with instructions to “go find a table and sip this one.” 

He followed Taako to an out of the way table and sat heavily. His face felt warmer than usual and he couldn’t stop smiling. “Hey, you’re really good looking, you know?” he told Taako.

“Yeah, duh.” 

“She is too.” He looked back at Lup, still at the bar. There was an inch of skin showing where her shirt rode up a bit, and that inch of bare, dark skin was the most important thing in Darry’s world. He watched it widen and narrow as she moved, wishing he were closer so he could see if it was as smooth as it looked. The low lights gave it a slightly purple cast that stuck in his mind after she stood, drink in hand, to join them. 

“No shit, homie,” Taako said. Lup sat and he grinned at her. “Nerd’s already tipsy.” He said something in Elvish after that. Darry caught the words “how,” “want,” and “you.” His Elvish was rusty and barely learned in the first place. He could read it pretty well, but listening and speaking were outside his talents.

“Very,” Lup said back in the same. 

The music got louder and the people from outside started trickling in, and before long it was deafening. The three of them had to lean in and yell to hear each other over the din. After a few unsuccessful attempts at conversation they decided to relax and enjoy the music and drinks. Lup and Taako got up to dance and Darry watched them. He didn’t know how to tell if someone was good at dancing, but they were fun to watch. Periodically one or the other would come back with another drink for him and something to shout in his ear, usually something about the band or instructions for how to not fuck up drinking something new. Darry drank, listened to music, and watched the rhythmic crush of bodies moving around the bar, trying to find a scientific explanation for the system of movement they all seemed to understand instinctively. It could probably be answered with the properties of bonds, but every time he started to understand it, his eyes wandered back to Lup and he lost track of his thought. 

“Time to go, Bluejeans,” someone yelled, grabbing his arm and pulling him up. It sounded like Taako, but the person grabbing him was a few inches too short, a dozen shades too pale, and human. He was wearing his clothes, though. He dragged Darry out of the bar, and in the clear of the night outside he could see that it was Taako. Something about the light in the bar had played a trick on him. 

“Where’s Lup?” Darry asked. 

“Taking care of our tab. She’ll be out in a second. No worries.” Taako said. He leaned against the stone facade of the bar. Darry copied him, trying to look cool. It would be easier if things would stop spinning and he wasn’t fighting for balance every second. He closed his eyes and took a few breaths of humid summer air. It was going to rain soon. He could taste it on the tip of his tongue. 

When he opened his eyes again, Lup had materialized on his left. “C’mon nerds. We need to find another bar.” 

She and Taako kicked off the wall in synch and started walking. Darry followed just a step behind them. They were mesmerizing. Were all elves that beautiful, or had he gotten lucky and found two pearls on the same night? It couldn’t be a coincidence. There had to be some logic behind him meeting them together like this. Bond energy at work, maybe. He would run the numbers when his head was buzzing less. 

The next bar was quieter. They got a table where they could hear each other without trouble and a server who understood that when Taako said “keep ‘em comin’,” he meant  _ keep ‘em comin’ _ . 

A few rounds in, Darry got the courage to ask what had been on his mind since the last bar. “So are you two related or something? You look really similar.” 

They looked at each other, then back at him. “I don’t see it,” Taako said. 

“What, are you saying all elves look the same to you?” Lup asked. 

“Kinda racist.” 

“Very offensive.” 

“I’m  _ deeply  _ offended.” 

“Why are we letting racist assholes hang out with us, anyway?” 

Darry hunched a little further down with every switch until his shoulders were around his ears and he was hiding behind his drink. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just… you look kind of alike, is all.” His voice was tiny and shrank to nearly nothing by the end. 

Lup took pity on him. “We’re twins, dingus.” 

“Of course we look alike.” 

“Be weird if we didn’t.” 

He unhunched and nodded. “I thought you were her reflection when I first saw you.” 

Taako raised an eyebrow. “Ok, now I actually am offended. Lup is clearly the reflection. I’m the real deal, baby. Accept no immitations.” 

“That means I get to be the evil twin. I’m down with that,” Lup said. 

“But you’re beautiful,” Darry said stupidly. “I mean… the beautiful one is always good, right? So you’re definitely the good twin. Not that evil twins are ugly,” he added so he wouldn’t make Taako mad. “I’m sure you’re beautiful too, but she’s, I mean,  _ look  _ at her. Wow.” 

Lup had an expression he couldn’t read on her face and Taako was face down on the table, shaking with laughter. “ _ We’re keeping him, _ ” he said in elvish. “ _ He’s fun _ .” 

Darry’s face split into a smile. He understood that! “ _ You knowledge I talk elf also? _ ” he asked in his best forest elf accent. His professor told him it was indistinguishable from a native speaker, and it was his proudest moment of that entire semester. 

“Very good,” Lup laughed. Taako was clinging to the table to keep from falling on the floor he was wheezing so hard. 

“So what’s your real name?” Lup asked after a few more drinks. Darry had lost count. Counting, math, was his speciality, but he had no idea how many different glasses had been in his hand in the last four hours. They all blurred together in a mashup of textures and tastes. 

“Barry has to be short for something,” she clarified. “It’s not Bartholomew, is it? I’ve always hated that name.” 

“No it’s,” he started to tell her that it was Darry, short for Daryll, not Barry, but something infinitely better came to mind. “It’s  _ Barold.”  _ Like Harold, but with a B! Brilliant! 

She thought so too, because she shrieked “Barold!” and started laughing like it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. Her laughter exploded out of her like it was trying to escape and be part of the world. She was wild and beautiful and he loved the way her mouth formed around words. He wanted to watch her talk and laugh forever.  

“ _ Barold Bluejeans,”  _ Taako yelled.   
“Yes?” Darry yelled back, like he had been called from across the room. 

The twins collapsed in fits of laughter that set Darry off too. His shoulder hit stone and he realized he had fallen off his chair, and all it did was make him laugh harder. Struggling to get up pulled the chair down with him. He lay on the floor of the bar clutching the seat of a chair and laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, and Darry realized that this was the best night of his entire life. 

Two more drinks, one fruity and sipped through a straw so he didn’t have to get up, the other a shot that Taako graciously poured in his mouth for him, and the Bartender told them it was last call. 

“Gotcha, gotcha,” Taako said. 

“How d’you wanna do this, lil’ bro?” Lup asked him. 

“Dunno. One more drink and we’ll bounce?” 

“We’re the only ones still here.” 

“Bummer. So no chance of a game of pool or a few rounds of hold ‘em?” 

“Just us. How many spell slots you got left?” 

Darry had long since lost track of their conversation, but he caught enough to know it was time to pay. He dug his coin pouch out of his jeans and tossed it up in the direction of the table. 

Taako caught it and looked inside. “Problem solved. Damn, homeboy is rich.” 

“The IPRE pays really well and I work a lot of overtime, life 60 hours a week to get the ship finished. But it’s done now. Mostly. We still have to do some last minute stuff to the inside. The engine is done. I did that. I did the engine,” Darry rambled. “I also did the main thrusters. Secondary thrusters were all moustache guy. What’s his name? He has the moustache. He doesn’t like me much.” 

“Alright, my dude, time to go home.” Taako lifted him under his shoulder and set him on his feet. Gravity swayed around him, but Lup was on his other side, holding him up. “Where do you live?” she asked. 

“Rockstonburge,” he said. He hadn’t been home to see his family in a while. Maybe he would do that before the ship launched. 

“No, dipshit,” Taako said. “Where in town?”

“Oh. Campus. IPRE campus.” 

“ _ Where  _ on campus?” 

“The dorms.” Gods he was tired. His chin hit his chest and he stopped trying to move his feet. He was just stumbling along anyway. All he needed to do was close his eyes for a second, just a second, and then he could get home. 

Something forced his head up and he opened his eyes, face to face with Lup. She was holding his face in both hands, looking deep into his eyes, into his soul. Her eyes were gray and endless, framed by thick, black lashes, and he fell in love instantly. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do a lot of things. 

“Hey asshole, which dorm do you live in?” 

“Fuck it. Just take him home with us.” 

Darry lost track of who was speaking and what they were saying. He was being dragged down the street by a pair of hot twins while they talked to each other about him, then he was inside and being dragged up some stairs into a vaguely familiar hallway.

“This isn’t my dorm,” he said.

“No shit,” said one of the twins. “It’s ours.” 

Keys jingled, a door unlocked, and one of them said, “Shit. Hold him here for a minute. I need to go fix the… you know what.” 

“You honestly think he’s going to notice?” 

“Don’t want to risk it. Just hold him.” 

His weight shifted to one arm under his shoulders instead of two around his waist and he stood in the hall with a very warm person while the sounds of cursing and furniture dragging floated around him. He wanted to know what was going on, but every time he figured out the words to ask, Lup’s eyes drifted back into his mind and he was struck dumb again. She was incredible. 

“Alright loverboy, time for bed.” The arms that held him so warmly shoved him horizontal onto something softish and narrow. Oh, a bed. 

“‘M still wearing my clothes,” he said. 

“We can take care of that when you’re not wasted.” It sounded like there was supposed to be a wink to go with that, but it was too dark to tell. 

Darry’s eyes adjusted slowly to the near pitch black. There was a little light filtering in through the windows from the campus, just enough that he could see the very edges of things. He curled up on his side and watched the shapes of the twins move around. He closed his eyes for a moment, just a moment, and when he opened them again everything was still and he could see the mountain range of Lup’s body on the bed across from him. Ups and downs of hips and waists, shoulders and the long curve of her neck, outlined by the crack of light coming from under the door. He watched her and let her push out all his other thoughts from the night. They were confusing and she wasn’t.

“C’n I tell you a secret?” Lup whispered across the empty space between their beds. 

He could reach out and touch her if he wanted to, only an arm’s length away in the dark. He didn’t. There was a spider-silk delicate spell over the night that would break if he moved, if he did anything more than breathe. He wanted this moment to last forever, and the feel of her, how soft she was, how warm, would be the end of it. 

“Yeah,” he said, barely a breath. 

“Barold is…” she muffled a laugh in her pillow. “It’s a really great name. Barold… Barry Bluejeans. I like it.” 

“Yeah. I like it too.” He smiled softly in the dark. If it meant he could do this again, see her again, hear her laugh again, he would go by Barry Bluejeans for the rest of his life. Nothing else mattered at that moment except that he had a way to make her happy. It was the most important thing in the world. 


	2. The IPRE Crew

“Found ‘em,” a man said, waking Barry from a dream he had long since stopped trying to understand. The bond engine wasn’t working because everyone had turned into hamsters and were too busy building a swimming pool to care about the fact that the ship could only fly backwards. The second he woke up he forgot half of it, and by the time he figured out who was talking, a huge man who took up most of the doorway, the rest was gone from his mind. 

Barry’s stomach rolled over and he lurched to his feet, looking around desperately for a place to empty his stomach. Lup pointed him silently to their bathroom and he nodded his thanks, scared to open his mouth. He stepped over Taako, curled up on the bathroom floor with a pillow still fully dressed, and retched up what felt like everything he had eaten in the past three days. 

“Who’s that?” the man who woke him up asked. 

Lup’s voice was rough and sleepy. “Barry Bluejeans. He did the engine. Head nerd in charge or something. Drinks like a  _ champion.”  _

“Is that where you guys went last night?” 

“Yeah. How long’d it take Dav to notice us missing?” 

“He noticed you weren’t at the crew meeting this morning.” 

“Shit, seriously?” Lup asked. Her bed creaked and she grunted. “Hey losers, we missed the thing.” 

Barry was done with the actual puking part of things and had his head resting against the rim of the bowl for the recovery and regret part of throwing up. “That wasn’t until noon,” he said. “What time is it?” He checked his wrist and stared at his bare arm for a second before he could comprehend what was going on. “My watch is missing.” 

“Them’s the breaks,” Taako said. “Was it expensive?” 

“Not really. It was a candlenights gift, though.” 

“Bummer. You done? Taako’s gotta pee.” 

“Yeah, yeah sorry. One sec.” Barry dragged himself up to standing and left him to it. Lup was rocking one hell of a look out in the bedroom part of the dorm. Her makeup was smeared on one side, perfect on the other, and she had her hair twisted up on top of her head in a crooked bun. Her clothes were more wrinkle than not, and, when he took a second look, Barry saw she wasn’t wearing a bra. He probably didn’t look much better, so he decided not to say anything, not that he could think of much to say with his head pounding. 

“It’s one,” she said after a lengthy yawn and stretch.

The man was still filling the doorway, blocking his escape. “Sup little dude. You’re Barry?” 

“Yup. Barry, uh. Barry Bluejeans. That’s me.” 

The man’s smile was blinding. “I love it. Magnus Burnsides, head of IPRE security, and one of the illustrious two to make it to the meeting this morning.” 

“Rub it in a little harder, Burnsides,” Lup muttered. 

“We rescheduled for four. Cap’nport says if you’re not there, you’re off the team.” 

“He’s bluffing,” Taako said. He stood next to Lup with his arm thrown lazily over her shoulder. Even hung over, they matched. His hair was still mostly in last night’s braid piled on top of his head and one side of his makeup, the opposite side from Lup’s, was smeared mostly off. Barry didn’t know why he was surprised. 

“You’re a disaster,” she said. 

“Pot, kettle, black,” he countered. “Now, if the humans don’t mind,” 

“The elves need showers,” she finished. 

“Right, sorry,” Barry said. 

 

“Are they always like that?” he asked Magnus when they were alone in the hallway.

“Like what?” 

“All matching and stuff?” 

Magnus shrugged. “You’ve spent more time with them than me. You’re the twin expert. I’ve only met them twice now.” 

Barry didn’t know what to say to that, so he stayed quiet. Snippets from the previous night came back to him while he walked. Them mirroring each other and finishing each other’s sentences or speaking at the same time. Barry calling them the wrong names and getting laughed at. Matching laughs, matching voices, mirror images separated only by tiny details that disappeared when he stopped being able to pay attention. 

“So, question,” Magnus asked. They were going the same way and ended up walking together a short ways. “Do you wear the jeans to match your name or did you change your name to match your jeans?” 

“It’s, uh. It’s a long story.” How did he explain Lup’s laugh, soft and musical in the night? He would do anything to hear it again. She liked his name, Barry Bluejeans. No one liked Daryll Archewalder. Daryll stayed in the lab running experiments until two in the morning to prove he wasn’t part of the team because his parents donated a library to the campus. Barry drank like a champion and made the most beautiful woman in the world laugh. He was Barry now and could figure out the rest as he went. 

“You can tell me later.” They reached the point where their paths split and Magnus peeled off to go do whatever he did with his time. Barry trudged up the steps to his dorm with leaden feet, wanting nothing more than to fall back asleep. He needed a shower first, and maybe something to eat. Showering took priority. 

He stood dully under the hot water and let it wash away the last night. Some more memories came back. 

_ “But you’re beautiful.” _

The look on her face, the one that didn’t make sense the night before, came back with full clarity. Amusement, pity, and pride, all wrapped up in a softening that looked almost like love in his memory. He was probably reading too much into it, but he couldn’t mis-imagine the way her eyes sparkled. She liked him. She had liked him. He just needed to be the person he was last night and he might have a chance. Barry Bluejeans. Barry had a chance with Lup. 

Clean jeans -- wow, he really didn’t own anything else, did he? -- a clean shirt, and he rescued his robe from the box in the alley, and when he was dressed he felt good enough to go attempt lunch. The cafeteria served edible food. He got a tray of some meatloaf derivative and what may have been vegetables a few boilings ago and found a place to sit with a notebook and work on his dog bond study. All that was left to do was turn the data into something the average person could read so it could be published. 

A woman with coffee-brown skin and tight black curls sat across from him and opened her own book. Barry spared it a glance and saw that it was more words than his number dense papers, some kind of story. She wrote while she ate, alternating paying attention to her words and her food, a recognizable, if bland looking salad. It didn’t seem to make much difference which she was looking at, regarding her writing speed or legibility. 

“I’m Lucretia,” she said, when she reached a stopping point. “Chronicler for the voyage. Captain Davenport said I should come say hello to you.” 

“Oh, um, pleasure to meet you. I’m Barry.” He put down his pen and shook her hand. She had a strong handshake, more so than he expected. “What does a chronicler… do? Exactly?” 

“I chronicle.” She said seriously, then gave him a wry smile. “The institute wants detailed notes on everything that happens on our voyage, exactly as they happened. I’ve made a bit of a name for myself writing the truth, biographies mostly, so they asked me to take on the task. I think it sounds interesting.” 

“It’s definitely unprecedented work,” Barry said. “I thought it was all theoretical until I saw the blueprints for the ship, like it was going to happen maybe in the next hundred years maybe. To be alive at the same time as this, to get to be  _ part  _ of this, it still blows my mind.” 

“How does it work, exactly? Davenport tried to explain it, but, well, I’m starting to think he doesn’t know the meaning of laymans terms,” Lucretia said. There was that wry smile again. It looked good on her. 

“It’s complicated. Do you have a sheet of paper I can borrow? I’m not supposed to do scratch writing on these.” Barry waved his research notes around. 

She tore a piece of paper from her journal and he started sketching the planar system the way he had been taught when he started getting into the more advanced sciences. “The first thing to understand about the planes,” he started when he had a decent outline, “is that everything you’ve ever been told about them is completely wrong.” 

 

* * *

 

The four o’clock meeting felt a lot like syllabus day to Barry. He sat in a circle of chairs with the rest of the launch crew. Davenport took the role of professor and stood on his chair so he wasn’t looking up at all of them and gave them a brief rundown of the mission, nothing he hadn’t heard a million times before. Traveling through interplanar space to discover what lies beyond the edge of reality, push the boundaries of science and technology, maybe look into the eyes of the gods and come back having ascended beyond the comprehension of living beings, basic stuff. Then he had them all go around the circle and introduce themselves for those of the group who didn’t know each other already. 

“I’m Lucretia, writer in charge of chronicling the expedition. I’ve written a few dozen books now, but this is something new.” 

“Merle Highchurch, cleric.” An unusually tall dwarf, almost four and a half feet tall, said. He had a craggy face, short beard, and kind eyes. “The inter-faith religious authorities have a vested interest in the whole “look into the eyes of god” thing and wanted someone with some experience along to tell if god is real or not. He probably is, almost definitely, but, you know, gotta confirm.” 

“Magnus Burnsides, head of the punching things department. I’m here to keep you guys out of trouble.” 

“Lup, research and exploration.” 

“Taako, head chef.” 

Magnus looked something close to confused. He had a complicated face, interesting scars pulling it different directions. “Why do we need a chef?” 

“Hombre, my dude, if you chucklefucks want to cook for yourselves that’s fine by me and we are totes down to stay here on terra firma, but you’ll be missing out on months of five star food because you decided to look a candlenights wrapped gift horse right in the fuckin’ pearly whites,” Taako said, leaned back and unconcerned.

Magnus’s confusion didn’t dissipate, so Lup heaved a put upon sigh and said, “Thesis statement: yes, we get a chef. Shut up and don’t question it.” 

Then it was Barry’s turn. “I’m Barry Bluejeans.” Davenport gave him a look, but he elected not to pay attention to it and forged ahead, pretending to be fearless. “I’m the head of the science and engineering department, kinda the entire department for the trip. My job is the engine. I’d be happy to, um, explain how it works if you’re curious.” Lucretia gave him a smile and he returned it. Talking to her about the conversion of bond energy to propulsion was one of the most interesting things he had done since getting to campus. She asked good questions. 

Taako coughed and it sounded suspiciously like “nerd.” Barry’s cheeks colored a little, but he told himself it didn’t bother him. He was the nerd who got them flying. That had to count for some kind of cool points. 

“I’m Davenport, captain of our mission. I’ve chosen all of you because you’re the best of the best, and I know you won’t let me down.” 

He said a few more words about how their mission was the most important scientific advancement of the century and that they would go down in history as the pioneers who started an incredible new age. The future of the scientific and magical world rested on their shoulders. When he was done he dismissed them, and added, “Barry, can you stay for a moment? I have some things to talk to you about.” 

“Ooh, someone’s in trouble,” Magnus said. 

They left in clumps of humans, elves, and Merle, leaving Barry and Davenport alone. Davenport only came up to his waist, but Barry still felt like the captain towered over him. 

“Barry Bluejeans?” He raised an eyebrow. 

“It’s, um.” He didn’t have a way to explain it to his captain that didn’t sound stupid. He fell in love. His heart, his soul, had transformed overnight. He was a new person now, and his name was Barry Bluejeans, because Barry was the person who made Lup look at him like he was someone. “It’s complicated.” 

Davenport nodded like he understood everything Barry hadn’t said. “Don’t let it affect your work,” he said, and that was all. 

 

* * *

 

The next few days in the lab passed quickly. All that was left to do were efficiency test and a few minor tweaks to the ship’s wiring, and that could be done with a few specialists. Barry still felt responsible for the ship, so he stayed on and worked as hard as ever to get it ready for launch day. The rest of the team was capable of handling it, but if something slipped through the cracks because he didn’t catch it in time he would, one, probably die, and if he didn’t, never stop kicking himself for taking it easy at such and important time. 

The twins seemed to spend a lot of time in the lab with him, or maybe he was just used to working alone and in the company of other quiet, antisocial  scientists and wizards. They were distracting, not enough to slow him down significantly, but it threw him off his game and made him feel the need to double check everything, especially after Lup made an offhand remark about him misplacing a variable in one test. He had been staring at it for hours, trying to figure out why it wasn’t adding up, and she caught it reading over his shoulder. He tried what she commented in passing and it worked. 

“That… how did you know that?” he asked. 

She shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.” 

“That’s not luck. It took me a solid two years of schooling to even begin to understand the background behind-” 

“Whatevs. Me and Taako are going out tonight. You in?” Lup asked. 

Barry looked at the work spread out around him. “Can’t. Too much to do if we’re going to make the solstice launch date. I don’t want to be the reason we got held back another year. Rain check?” 

“Cool cool. Gotta bounce.” She nodded. 

Taako was giving her a thumbs up from across the room where he was talking to Devin, the moustache guy. He seemed to spend a lot of time with him while Lup talked to Barry when they dropped by the lab. Barry didn’t get it. Neither of them had anything good to say about Devin, but every time they came in Taako took at least a short detour by his desk to ask a question or two.

“He in?” and “Nah,” and they left.

“Those two are weird,” Devin said when they were gone.

“Hmm?” Barry didn’t want to hear it, but he didn’t have a good way to tell him to piss off. 

“They just give off this vibe, you know?” 

“Not really.” Barry shrugged and tried to get back to work. 

“The bond engine thinks so too. Come look at the readouts real quick. Eight minutes ago it experienced a 20% spike in energy output, right when they walked in, and stayed that way until they left about 30 seconds ago.” He pulled up the report and Barry glanced over it, hoping Devin would stop talking if he humored him. 

“Spikes when a new person walks into a room are common. I’d be more concerned if nothing happened. This is par for the course.” 

Devin shook his head. “ _ Twenty percent,  _ Barry. Look, I can run the numbers for you. That’s not within the standard deviation for two people.” He started rummaging around in his desk. “Where are all my  _ bloody  _ pens? That’s the third time this week. Let me borrow one of yours for a second. This won’t take long.” 

“Just leave it, Dev.” Barry said. “So the meter fluxed. It’s a delicate instrument, breaks every other week. It was due for a blip. The engine isn’t your problem anyway.” 

“I don’t want it to  _ be  _ a problem, and those two weirdos-” 

“Leave it,” Barry said shortly. He was still head scientist and was long since done humoring Devin. If he couldn’t work on the thrusters, he could get assigned somewhere else, far, far away. 

The twins were his friends, soon to be part of the crew he would spend months in close quarters with. The last thing he needed was a rumor starting a rift between them. 

They were a little off, yeah, but so was Barry. So were all the members of the launch crew. They weren’t chosen for their personalities. Every single one of them was the best in their field, bar none, and could get the job done better than anyone else the captain could have chosen. 

He tried not to let the insult get to him. Devin and his ridiculous moustache only had a job until launch date in two weeks. Barry and the twins were going to make history. 

 

* * *

 

Barry stayed in the lab from open to close most days, there with a key to unlock the doors as soon as the sun was up and deep into the night until he nearly fell asleep at his desk. There was always something else to do. Tiny problems. Not even problems, but things that could be better. He saw the rest of the launch crew in the cafeteria on occasion and when they dropped by to check on him. They were worried about him, Magnus, Merle, and Lucretia were, but it didn’t really matter. He would be done soon, and then he could take a few days off until the launch. A few days turned into two days as the deadline loomed and he still wasn’t done. Two days of rest would be enough to get him back on top of his game, as long as the ship was done in time. It could all but fly itself now. That was a new goal he wrote down on the corner of his ideas board. “Self-flying ship.” It was a dream, and if he put in a few more hours he might be able to make it a reality. It would depend on how far he could get in the next couple days before launch. 

He looked up from his work one evening and the rest of the crew were standing around his desk in a semi-circle. 

“Cuff ‘im, big guy,” Lup said, looking as serious as Barry had ever seen her. 

“I don’t actually have handcuffs, you know,” Magnus said. 

She groaned. “ _ Yes I definitely know that.  _ Thank you, so much, for ruining my dramatic moment.” 

“Just pick him up,” Taako said. 

“Can do.” Magnus grabbed Barry and before he could parse what they were talking about had him slung over a shoulder and was carrying him out of the lab. 

“Guys, I have work to do! The bond engine-” 

“Is done,” Davenport interrupted him. “It’s been done for a week now. You’re coming out to spend time with the team and have some fun, and that’s final.” 

“But-” 

_ “Final.”  _

Barry deflated. “Yes sir. Um, where are we going?” 

“Drinking!” the twins announced at the same time as Lucretia said “A play.” 

They stared each other down. The twins were accomplished starers, but they had nothing on Lucretia’s purse-lipped look of disapproval. “The captain said we were going to a play,” Lucretia said. “Shakespeare in the park.” 

“Yeah, across the street from a bar,” Lup said.

“where those of us who don’t want to watch losers strut and fret,” 

“will be, until you nerds come drink with us.” 

“Also the bar has a patio. Perfect play watching spot,” 

“for those of you who want the best of both worlds.” 

“Ooh, ooh, I pick best of both worlds,” Merle said, hand in the air.

“Yeah, same,” Magnus said. 

The bar group looked expectantly at Barry. 

“I… actually really like Shakespeare,” he said. “Sorry.” 

“You’re dead to me, Barold,” Taako said. It took Barry a moment too long to realize he was joking and wipe the crestfallen look off his face. He lived in a constant state of waiting for the twins to realize how lame he was and reject him, and it was momentarily terrifying every time they joked about it. 

Taako slung an arm around Lup’s shoulders and pointed at Barry. “Him? Dead. Buried. Bar?” 

“Bar,” she agreed. They started off toward the west end of the park, followed by Merle and Magnus. 

“Catch you later,” Merle called behind him, jogging to keep up with the others. 

“Did you know that was going to happen?” Barry asked when it was just him, Davenport, and Lucretia. 

“Yes,” Davenport sighed.

“I had hoped…” Lucretia trailed off. “Anyway, let’s find a good spot, shall we?” 

They spread their blankets on a grassy hillside overlooking the stage and watched the stage hands set up for the play while the sun was setting. As soon as it was down and night had fallen, stage lights came up and a handful of human actors dressed to look like some kind of fey came out. 

“Who are they?” Barry leaned over to ask Lucretia. 

“Shh, just watch,” she said back. 

Barry thought he liked Shakespeare. He’d taken a class on it in college to fill a credit, really enjoyed it too, but he had nothing on Lucretia. She gasped, cheered, and laughed so hard tears streamed down her face, and was at points more entertaining than the play itself. That’s not to say the play was boring. The actors were fantastic and did amazing things with magic to bring the play above and beyond what he ever expected to see for free in a city park. Barry sensed it was mostly illusory magic, simple stuff, but so masterfully done that he wouldn’t have noticed if he didn’t have two degrees in wizardry. 

“Good?” Lucretia asked him when they were folding up their blankets and packing up after the play. 

“Amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“Better than drinking?” she asked. 

Barry didn’t give an immediate answer, because his knee jerk response was to lie to make her happy, and she was smarter than that. Even if she didn’t see through it instantly, he owed her more than a white lie. “Different kind of amazing. I didn’t fall out of my chair laughing, but I also didn’t throw up. The way I see it, we’re dealing with different scales and different methods of balancing.” 

“I see. So if you had to choose between one or the other for the rest of your life, which would you choose?” she asked after a moment’s thought

“Oh, hells,  _ neither.  _ Can you imagine if your only options for having fun were getting smashed or watching plays? I’d be sick of either in less than a year.” 

The conversation kept them talking for the walk to the bar and through their first couple drinks. Lucretia had something of a black and white view of the world and sometimes forgot to look for third, and sometimes fourth or fifth options. Barry had spent the last few years stretching what the word “impossible” meant and was always looking for more options. The conversation spiraled through the lines between truth and fiction, how the laws of reality changed between planes, how far you could bend the laws of physics before something broke irreparably, and what they thought they would see in the next dimension. After that, and four drinks each, Lucretia was looking a little green around the gills and was slurring more than Barry liked. 

“I think you should stop for a bit,” he said. 

“No. No, I’m okay. I’m…” she paused for a long few seconds. “What am I drinking? This is terrible.” 

The twins appeared on either side of her, leaned in so Barry couldn’t see what they were doing with her. 

“This is terrible,” Lup said. 

After a moment Taako added, “how can you drink this?” 

“Here, try mine.” 

“But I wanted yours. Try mine.” 

They argued back and forth, shuffling and clinking glasses while Lucretia got more and more confused. Her head rotated back and forth like she was watching a tennis match and she couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The argument escalated in heat and volume until the twins both yelled “Fine!” and stomped away in opposite directions, drinks in hand. 

“What?” Lucretia asked. “What just happened?”

“I have no idea, but I’m going to find out.” Barry waved Magnus over and asked him to keep an eye on her while he figured out what, exactly, they did to Lucretia. He found Lup in a corner sipping a drink and making a face after every taste. Taako got to her at about the same time Barry did and leaned back against the wall with her. They traded drinks and he took over alternating sipping and making faces. 

“What the hell was that?” Barry asked. 

“That,” Lup said, “was the One Free Drink scheme.” 

“Not to be confused with the two free drink scheme, which is much more complicated and only works about half the time,” Taako added. 

“We stole her drink,” they said together when Barry wasn’t any less nonplussed. 

“She was getting wasted.” 

She doesn’t need to be wasted.” 

“Now she has Taako’s drink.” 

“Virgin gin and tonic with lime and cherry to taste.” 

“Stevie-”

“Bartender,” Taako cut in. 

“Great guy, terrible kisser. He’s under orders to give her more of those and tell her it’s alcohol until she’s a little less... ehhh,” 

“Shitfaced.” 

“Yeah, that.” 

“So you weren’t fighting?” Barry asked. 

“Pfft. No.”

“Hell no.” 

“You’ll  _ know  _ if we get in a fight.” 

“We do that when we want free drinks.” 

“Careful, Lulu. You’re giving away trade secrets.” 

“Anywho, no problems on this end. Go have another drink and talk nerd shit with your wizard friends. We can handle ourselves.” She flicked her fingers dismissively. Barry took that as his cue to stop questioning her and go back to the bar to hang out with the wizard members of the IRPE launch crew. He kept an ear on the twins though, just in case, and heard something that he didn’t know how to categorize. He put it in the back of his mind to look at later. 

“He’s getting too close.” 

“He’s people now, Koko. He’s allowed to get close.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed chapter two of this adventure! I'm going to try to update every wednesday for as long as I can keep the chapters coming. School starts again in a few weeks so that's going to cut into my writing time a little. I have the first five chapters written, so you'll get consistent updates for a month at least, and then we'll see. As always, leave a comment if you liked it, or if you hated it. I feed on attention.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Switch in perspective because that's how it be sometimes. That's just going to happen every few chapters.

Taako and Lup stood on the deck of the starblaster and watched pillars of black opal crash down onto their home. The round disc of the earth grew smaller and smaller, darker and darker, as they flew farther away from it and the blackness spread across its surface. One by one the stars winked out around them as more black opal spread across the sky. It was eating the universe, one star at a time. The darkness closed in around them, claustrophobic, eternal, flecked with blue and red and purple, threatening to swallow them whole. 

And then everything was white.

And then everything was black. 

There were stars again, but the twins couldn’t pick out any familiar constellations, nothing to tell them where they were. Another planet grew in the distance, blue and green, circling a yellow sun, with no darkness streaming down from the sky to smother it. They flew down closer and found a place to land on a new earth with no signs of habitation. 

Taako and Lup hadn’t moved from the deck. They unconsciously mirrored each other, sitting down slowly with their legs hanging through the railing of the ship’s deck, their heads leaned against it, and their hands gripping the bars. 

“Our home is gone,” Lup said, voice hollow.    
“Yeah,” Taako answered. 

“Everywhere we’ve ever been.” 

“Yeah.” 

“The whole planet.” 

“Yeah.” 

Lup was silent, drowning in the reality of her world being swallowed by darkness. Somehow she had survived, she and Taako, and five other people she barely knew. They were what was left of an entire universe, seven people and a ship that ran on love. She didn’t feel much love at that moment. With everything she had ever known gone forever, Lup didn’t know how to feel much of anything. 

“We don’t have to pay back our student loans now,” Taako said. 

Lup nodded once. 

“And that bartender is never going to come after us for skipping out on the bill that one time.” 

“I guess.” 

“Downside, you’re never getting those fifteen bucks back.” 

“Fuck Greg Grimaldus anyway.” 

“We both know he was never going to pay you back.” 

She laughed. It didn’t last long, but it was something. 

“Fuck, Koko. Everyone we know is gone.” 

“Yeah,” he said. The were 250 years old. The two of them had lived through a two and a half centuries of abandonment, wars, plagues, rises, and falls, all of it on the road where there was no guarantee they would ever see someone again, no matter what anyone promised. “What else is new?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was fun. Wasn't this one fun? I wish I could say I was sorry for the short length, but this is as long as the chapter wanted to be and I'm not here to argue with my own writing when this fic is the first decent thing I've made in a year. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you liked it, or if you hated it. Attention feeds me.


	4. Twin Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one is a little late! I usually try to update midnight on Wednesday, but last night I was wasted and didn't get to my computer until just now.

“We’re locked out of the ship.” It had ended up being Barry’s job to explain the problem, because it was his fault they were in the predicament in the first place. Nothing was on purpose, which is why no one was yelling at him, but it was still his responsibility that the crew was gathered outside the ship, trapped after he let the door slam shut behind him when he was the only one home. The twins got back last, and they were his last hope. 

“Unlocking spell,” Taako said.

“It’s not, uh, actually  _ locked.  _ Something fell in front of the door and now it’s jammed.” 

“Mhmm. Levitate?” Lup asked

“Can’t see it to levitate it.” 

“Farsight spell?” 

“Never learned that one. You could do it.” Barry had been banking on them being better wizards than him. Most of the time that was a safe bet to make. He still remembered vividly how they spent that first year fixing problems with the engine in minutes that he struggled with for days. 

“We’re out of spell slots. Long story,” Taako said at Barry’s look. “It’s whatever. Give us a couple hours to recharge and we’ll take care of it.” 

“I… uh. I left pizza rolls in the oven.” 

“Well shit. Aight Lulu, is it time for the amazing flying Taaco twins?” 

“The amazing  _ what  _ now?” Magnus made no effort to hide the delight in his voice. 

Lup started shucking out of her jacket. “I do believe it’s time for the amazing flying Taaco twins.” 

“Would you rather jump or throw?” 

“I’ll throw. You’re lighter. Up to the deck?” 

Taako bent to take his heels off. “Unless you want to aim for a window.” 

“Deck it is.” 

“Magnus,” they said together, “we have a job for you.” 

They were on a pizza roll based time limit, so they didn’t have time to do anything fancy. The twins showed Magnus how to a be base and how to time his upward movement with theirs. Lup was going to stand on his shoulders and together they would throw Taako high enough to get on the deck, two floors up. They got into position, Magnus knelt and making a stair step with his body, Lup on his shoulders, crouched down with her hands making a sling, and Taako a few feet away, stretching out and limbering up. 

“Ready, baby bro?” 

“Whenever you are, little sis.” 

“One,” 

“Two,” 

“Go!” they said together. 

Taako got a running start and climbed Magnus like a mountain goat in two light steps. His foot hit Lup’s hand and she shouted “Now!” Magnus moved, thrusting his entire bulk up as fast as he could. Lup did the same, and between the two of them Taako was launched upward at speed. He tucked into a ball and did a flip on his way up, then stuck the landing, arms up, feet together. It was one of them most graceful things the IPRE crew had ever seen him do, which wasn’t saying much since Taako occasionally fell off the couch when something funny happened on TV. 

“Did you  _ fucking  _ see that?” he yelled over the edge of the deck. 

“Show off!” Lup yelled back. 

Less than a minute later there was a crash from inside and the door opened to a breathless Taako. “Yeah, but did you  _ see  _ that?” 

“Yeah, and you’re a fucking show off. That flip was so unnecessary.” 

“The word you’re looking for, baby sis, is  _ beautiful.”  _

“Sure. You’re not rusty at all after six decades without doing anything more complicated than a cartwheel. I saw that tuck. Don’t even pretend that wasn’t sloppy.”

“Oh yeah, b-t-dubs, Bluejeans, your pizza rolls are charcoal. Anywho. Lulu, I think you need your eyes checked, because that tuck was fucking flawless and you should be weeping tears of joy to have seen it at all.” 

Barry ran inside to get his destroyed pizza rolls before they actually caught fire. They weren’t edible anymore, but he had only half a box. He could make more and not feel guilty about it. He tossed them in the trash, threw the tray in the sink, and made a new batch while the rest of the crew came in and went back to their lives, all except the amazing flying Taaco twins. 

When he went back out, pizza rolls in hand, they were rolling and flipping around on the grass, yelling at each other in a mix of common and rapidfire elvish. He watched them grab each other upside down and flip in a cycle so one twin’s legs were always on the ground, around in a circle, then fall apart onto the ground. 

“Gods we’ve gotten out of shape,” Lup said, panting. 

“Maybe you have,” Taako was breathing even harder than her, “but cha boy is at peak performance, always.”

“You’ve gotten fat and you know it.” 

“At least I’m still flexible.” He was lying flat on his back. Slowly he lifted one leg up in an arch over his body and touched his toe to the ground above his head with barely any strain. 

Not to be outdone, Lup sat up and spread her legs into a split, then bowed forward until her head was on the ground. “Suck it.” 

Sex with her must have been insane. 

“So you two are acrobats?” Barry asked,sitting next to them with his legs crossed and his plate in his lap. 

“Used to be. It’s been a few decades,” Lup said. 

“You never really forget how to do sweet flips. Shit comes in handy when your sister locks herself out of your apartment every day.” 

“That was two times.” 

“That was four times, bubeleh, in a row. Then two more. Then we got you a one of those nerd-ass keyrings that clipped to your belt and it mysteriously stopped.” 

“I had one of those on campus,” Barry said. 

“Thank you for proving my point, Bluejeans. Always appreciate the support,” Taako said without missing a beat. 

“How did you two get into something like this?” 

“There was a circus caravan going the same way as us and they didn’t need another cook, so we learned how to juggle. One thing led to another and three years later we’re famous for doing swan dives off hundred foot high platforms onto tightropes.” Lup said

“Good times,” Taako said. “I miss those guys sometimes. They were the good kind of crazy.” 

“Why did you leave?” Barry asked. 

Taako shrugged. “It was just time to dip out and find something new. We didn’t like to stay in one place too long back then, and three years is an eternity when you’re 150 and stupid.” 

“Hells. We were so stupid.” 

“What’s the longest you’ve ever lived anywhere?” Barry asked. 

“Four years.” 

“Five,” Lup corrected. “Monteqoi’s caravan.” 

“Doesn’t count. We decided that one like a hundred years ago.” 

Lup thought about it for a moment. “Okay, yeah, four.” 

That piqued Barry’s curiosity. The twins had a huge history built up that he was only beginning to see the surface of. “What happened?” 

“Long story, my dude.” 

“Very long story.”   
“Super boring.”    
“We won’t annoy you with the details.” 

They had been stretching in various configurations and flopped back in the grass, boneless. 

“Twin time?” Taako asked. 

“I think it’s twin time,” Lup agreed. 

Lup rolled backwards and Taako flipped forward onto their feet, and they disappeared into the ship together. 

There went that idea. It used to hurt that they didn’t trust him, but it had stopped bothering him a long time ago and now it was just the way things were. They didn’t trust anyone except each other. He got snippets sometimes and was starting to put together their story, but he barely had an outline so far. 

Just as an experiment, Barry tried to touch his toes. He got halfway down his shins and wasn’t able to push any farther. Oh well. Not everyone was meant to turn themselves into pretzels and jump two stories onto ships. It was interesting, though

  
  


The twins stood in one of the ship’s common areas facing each other. They were doing the identical thing today, same clothes, same shoes, same makeup, hair in matching braids over mirrored shoulders with flowered pins holding the ends in place. Barry was passing through, but he paused for a moment to see what they were doing. He had a good handle on the rest of the crew, but there was still so much about Lup and Taako he didn’t know. This promised to be interesting. They were doing the perfectly mirrored thing, too, both in binders to hide Lup’s chest and skirts that negated Taako’s narrow hips. He couldn’t tell one from the other and he was starting to understand that, sometimes, that was how they wanted it

“Mirror me, mirror you,” they said together, and started moving. Slowly, in perfect sync, they raised one arm above their heads and formed that hand into an OK sign. Their other hands went over their mouths and they took one step back. Steadily getting faster, one motion at a time, they copied each other while Barry watched. They pointed fingers at each others faces and said “summon water,” together. The one on the left ducked and the one on the right took a face full of water. The first scowled and the second laughed. 

“Point,” one said. “That’s 2-1.” 

“Bullshit. That was my move.” 

“You cast water. Not ducking was my move.” 

The other one crossed their arms. “Not moving isn’t a move.” 

“Doesn’t matter. You moved twice in a row.” 

“Still not fair.” 

The first one rolled their eyes. “Get over it. Reset.” 

They stood facing each other again and said together, “Mirror me, mirror you,” and started again. 

They moved together for a few minutes before Barry asked, “What are you guys doing?” 

“Playing mirror,” they didn’t look at him. They put a hand on each others cheeks and tilted their heads. “I’m winning. No you aren’t. I’m one point from victory, my dude. Doesn’t mean you’re going to win,” they said in one voice.

Barry was fascinated. It seemed effortless. “How do you do that?” 

“Do what?” 

“Talk at the same time.” They might have had a script planned for when someone asked them, or maybe they really were copying each other in real time. Was it possible that they were just that close? He wanted to test them against the bond engine and see how they affected it, and how strong their bond was. How did he create a control though? The engine knew them now, and the only way to completely remove their energy would be to kill them. He definitely didn’t want to do that. That was a little extreme, even for the pursuit of science. 

“What, like it’s a big deal?” They asked together. “People do this shit all the time, Bluejeans, my man. Jinx each other and shit like that.” 

“Point,” one said.

“Bullshit,” the other said. 

They had their legs in the air over their heads. The first flexed theirs so the flat of their foot faced the ceiling and the other had their toe pointed in the air. 

“Get more flexible, bitch. 3-1.” 

“Fuck you. Reset.” 

“Nope, I won. Get over it.” 

The second one huffed. “Fine. Next time you’d better watch out, because there will be no mercy.” She stopped pitching her voice down to match Taako’s, and Barry could tell that was Lup who had lost. She and Taako turned to face Barry together and slung matching arms around each other’s shoulders. 

“You need something?” they asked. 

“Just passing through,” Barry started. The twins copied him when he said “I got curious about what you were doing,” speaking just a fraction of a second after him. “How are you doing that?” all three said together. 

“Easy.” 

“You’re predictable.” 

“We could do this in our sleep,” they finished at the same time.

Lup flopped down on the couch and kicked her bare feet up. Taako shoved them off and sat down across from her. He threw his feet into her lap and draped himself back over the arm of the couch, lying languidly like a renaissance painting. She kicked her feet up onto his lap as well.

“So why were you doing that?” Barry asked. The twins were a mystery he was slowly starting to solve. He had some clues, but there was still so much to them that he didn’t understand, and this was a piece of the puzzle he’d never seen before. 

“Why does anyone do anything, my dude?” Lup asked. 

“We were bored.” 

“We’re still bored.” 

“I’m not bored,” Taako countered. “I won.” 

Lup kicked him in the chin. 

“Jealousy ain’t a good look, Lulu.” 

“Neither is gloating.” 

“Point taken in the spirit it was given.” He kicked her back, she grabbed his foot and wrenched him off the couch, and he pulled her down with him to the floor. Barry probably should have tried to stop them from fighting on the floor, but they seemed like they knew what they were doing. Not really -- their form was terrible and it was clear neither knew how to throw a punch to save their life -- but they weren’t in danger of seriously hurting each other and he didn’t read any actual anger from the fight. 

It ended with Lup sitting on Taako and pinning his head down by his hair. He was flailing and struggling to get up and not getting much of anywhere. “Twin time?” They asked at the same time after a couple seconds of non-fighting. Taako was breathing hard and Lup had to help him up. 

Barry watched them leave and wondered, not for the first time, what twin time was. 

  
  


Lup marched up the gangplank and onto the ship looking furious. She found Taako in the kitchen, grabbed him by the lapel, and dragged him off with a growl of “Twin time, now.” 

“Lulu, stove,” he reminded her, pulling back just far enough to turn it off before he let her drag him back toward their room. 

“What about my sandwich?” Magnus called after him. It was sitting in a pan abandoned and alone. 

“No worries, Mango. I’ll finish it later, fifteen mins, half an hour tops,” Taako yelled back before their door slammed and his voice was cut off.

“But I’m hungry,” Magnus told no one in particular. Barry hmmed and Merle grunted, neither looking up from their work. Barry was cross-referencing the bond engine’s manual with some texts from the native mages to see if it was possible to recreate the starblaster with this plane’s magic, maybe make a fleet of escape pods before the hunger got there. So far it didn’t look promising, but he still had hope. Merle was writing a sermon. 

“I can probably finish cooking it. How hard can it be?” Magnus asked. “It’s just burning bread and melting cheese. Or not burning bread I guess. I can melt cheese.” He turned the stove back on and grabbed the spatula from its little holder. “Melting cheese. Easy.” 

 

It turned out that melting cheese wasn’t that easy, and that when butter caught fire there were a few things you weren’t supposed to do. Freaking out (Barry) was one of them. Pouring a pot full of water on it to put it out (Magnus) was another. That caused more freaking out until Merle slapped Barry and told him to “Shut up and fix it,” while he called on Pan to heal Magnus’s face. That was going to take a lot of concentration, which meant Barry was alone with a fire he couldn’t put out with water. Fuck. 

“Fire, fire, who can fix fire?” It was spreading to the cabinets. He had maybe ten minutes before the entire kitchen went up and they were stuck eating cold food for the rest of the year. “Lup! She does fire!” He didn’t know if she did fire in that direction, but she couldn’t do worse than he was. 

He slammed open the door to their room, intent on letting them know how absolutely serious this was without freaking out any more. “What are you doing?” came out instead. Barry wasn’t sure what he was looking at, at first. He had expected a lot of things when he barged in on twin time. To be yelled at, definitely. The two of them wearing each other’s clothes or something, probably. Maybe he would get to see what they looked like without makeup. 

What he didn’t expect was to find was Lup and Taako naked and tangled together on Lup’s bed. Taako was laid back, reading a book. Lup was bouncing on his lap, head tipped back in pleasure. It took a long few seconds for him to figure out what, exactly, he had walked in on. 

“Are you having sex?” he asked. 

“Yup. Close the door, m’man. You’re lettin’ all the sexy out,” Taako said, not looking up from his book. 

Barry stepped in and closed the door behind him. 

“Not what I meant, but good enough,” Taako said. 

“Why are you having sex?” was the next logical step in Barry’s mind. 

Taako sighed and shut his book on his thumb to hold his place. “Long story, my dude. It starts with us wanting to have sex. Ends with us deciding to have sex. Oh look, it wasn’t that long a story after all. Adios, muchacho.” 

“Is this what twin time means?” Barry kept trying to come at it from a different angle and make it make sense. Maybe it was an illusion, or some magic elven ritual, or a trick, but no, the longer he looked the harder it was to deny that Lup and Taako were fucking, right in front of him. They weren’t stopping either. 

“Barry, shut up or leave.” Lup’s voice was soft and husky. Her breasts jiggled softly with every bounce and her hair was a rough, tousled mess over one shoulder, shifting and moving with her while she rolled her hips down onto Taako’s. When Barry didn’t move, she rolled her eyes. “Did you  _ need  _ something?” 

“Yeah,” he said numbly, still trying to put it together. “There’s a fire in the kitchen.  _ Why  _ are you--” 

“Fuckin’... Do you think you could have STARTED with that?” she asked. She rolled off of Taako’s lap and to her feet, shouldered Barry aside to grab a robe off the hooks on the back of the door, and marched out. “Neither of you go fucking anywhere,” she said before she left, glaring at both of them. 

“Roger.” 

“What?” Barry tried the door to follow her, but it was jammed. He rounded on Taako. “What?  _ What the fuck is going on here? _ ” 

“I’m gonna need you to take about 20% off the top, big guy. Twin time is alone time for a reason. That’s all you or anyone else ever needs to know.” 

“But she’s your sister.” 

Taako shrugged. 

“And you’re gay.” 

“Taako can get off to all kindsa stuff. NBD.” 

“ _ But she’s-”  _

He stood and put his hands on Barry’s shoulders, cutting him off. “Barold, let’s chat. We’re both reasonable dudes. Should we be doing this? Probably not. Should you have walked in without knocking?  _ Definitely  _ not. So, here’s the deal, Bluejeans my man. If you tell anyone, and I mean anyone at all, about what you saw here today, I will end you. I will destroy your corporeal form on every plane we go to, day one, year after year, until I find a way to end you for good.” His grip was painful. “Capisce?” 

“...Capisce.” He believed it. It wasn’t a stretch to think he would kill him over something like this. 

“Perf. Now you’re going to walk away and forget you ever even  _ considered  _ interrupting twin time. Understood?” 

“Yes.” 

Taako raised an eyebrow. “Yes what?” 

“Yes… sir?” Barry tried. 

“Damn straight.” He wrapped a companionable arm around Barry’s shoulders too hard to be comfortable, unlocked the door with a flick of his fingers, and shoved him out into the hall. 

Barry walked on autopilot away from their room and the radius of crazy that surrounded the twins. He got all the way down the hall before he realized he had a half-chub. Staring at the bulge in the front of his jeans, he sighed. Why was it always him? 

 

He noticed a lot of things about them after that, things he’d already known but that meant something new in light of recent events. It was like meeting them for the first time, knowing that they were together like that, and it made some things from the first few weeks he’d known them make more sense. The unfinished sentences, the secret glances, how close they always were -- had they stopped, or had he just gotten used to it? The latter, now that he saw them with fresh eyes. 

They were almost always touching each other. It was so casual that once the initial weirdness wore off, it was just how the twins were. Taako’s arm was almost always around Lup’s shoulders, and when it wasn’t, her arm was around his waist. They linked arms when they were walking together and kicked their feet into each other’s lap when they were on the same couch, when they weren’t entirely on top of one another, Lup flopped into a playful ragdoll over Taako or Taako asleep with his head pillowed on Lup’s chest and his long body draped out across hers. Their hips touched a lot. They were almost always butted up against each other, rubbing together when they were cooking together or looking over something in the lab. 

They definitely wore each other’s clothes, too. The line between men and women’s clothes was a blur whenever Taako was involved, naturally, but unless they owned matched sets of everything, Barry saw a lot of repeated clothes between the two of them. Not that they didn’t own two of a lot of things and wear matching outfits every so often. That was definitely something they did. 

Had Barry always known they shared a bed? He remembered something about them making bunkbeds and Taako’s room going unused most cycles. There was a cycle where early on he’d offered to help remake the bunk beds when the ship reset and gotten a “too much work, my dude,” in response that he hadn’t thought too much about, because the twins were mysteries that it wasn’t his job to solve. They’d definitely made jokes about stealing covers or bickered over who took up more space, but by that point Barry must have subconsciously known and it hadn’t registered. 

It was awkward being around the twins once he knew about them. He didn’t know what to think, so he avoided thinking about it, but when he was in the same room as them and their hips constantly brushing against each other he couldn’t keep it out of his head. Lup spent a lot of time in his mind, naked, surrounded by pooling sheets, with Taako under her. He left the room when that kind of thought invaded and usually went down to the lab to distract himself with science. 

“So are we just not friends anymore?” Lup asked. She followed him down and was sitting in front of his station, backwards on her chair.

Barry looked up at her and back down to his work. 

“You’re being a fucking child.” 

“It’s just… it’s weird, okay?” he said, defensive. How did she not get that? 

“Only because you’re making it weird.” 

“No, it’s definitely weird because you’re  _ fucking your brother.  _ I think I’m reacting pretty god damn rationally to the fact that you and your  _ twin brother  _ were having sex.” 

She laughed without humor. “ Barry, what we do behind closed doors is none of your damned business. Taako and I have been together, yes,  _ together,”  _ she added when he looked like he was going to say something, “since before you were born, and we’re going to be  _ together  _ long after you’re dead. So, suck it up, buttercup.” 

“I’m just not comfortable with it.” 

“So what? It’s not any of your business.” 

“What do you want me to say, Lup? Congratulations for the incest? It’s totally normal and I don’t care?”

“I want you to stop treating me like a fucking lepper and talk to me again. We were friends, right?” 

“We… we  _ are  _ friends. I still want to be friends. It’s just… kind of weird. It’s weird. I need some time to get used to the idea, okay?” The memory of her bouncing on Taako’s lap came back to him and he looked away, blushing. “Just give me some time.” 

She nodded. “Okay. Okay, I can do that. Time. How much time are we talking?” 

“Dunno. This is a new one for me. I mean, I know I grew up in the country, but the rumors about everyone out there screwing their cousins is greatly exaggerated. There were  _ maybe _ three people in my high school who did that.” 

Lup snorted. “In your highschool of 300? That’s, what, 1% cousin fuckers? Get on our level, podunk nowhere high.” 

They laughed and it was only a little bit forced. It was going to take time, but Barry would get used to it the same way he got used to everything strange in his life. He’d dealt with worse than this, and as long as he remembered that he would get through learning that the twins were together. 

Lup gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze and left him to science and processing. Did he still love her? He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes so he could better look within. She was beautiful, the most beautiful person he had ever met. That was just the surface, though. There was so much more to her. He’d spent years getting to know her and had more to go on now than a party elf and a sleepy voice in the dark that still haunted his dreams. She was some kind of genius of science, her magic was beyond what he had ever hoped to achieve for himself, and she was funny and strange and all kinds of things he had never expected that first week when she exploded into his life. 

He loved her. It wasn’t the same infatuation he had when they first met, but he hadn’t felt that way for a couple years now. There were more important things on his plate, like the fates of worlds and the mystery of what was happening to the planar system and why. They still didn’t know. The hunger was ceaseless and unknowable, and it took precedence over Lup in Barry’s mind most days. 

They would be alright. Not soon, and not easily, but he would get used to it. He could get used to anything if he had enough time, and after the last few years it was starting to look like nothing would ever change. He was stuck with them for the kind of foreseeable future that might not ever have an end. He could either get used to it and let things go back to normal, or hate and resent them for it for the rest of his life. 

Huh. Resent. There was a word he didn’t expect. He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers together to examine that one. What did he know? They were together and had been for decades, at the shortest, maybe centuries. He had never been with anyone for more than a few months, and since they started traveling the planar system, not even that long. The people on the planes they visited were temporary fixtures in his life, a year at most, and he couldn’t shake that thought when he spent time with them. The crew were a possibility in the back of his mind, but not one that had solidified into anything real. They were tricky bonds to navigate with how well they knew each other, how physically close they were forced to be, and how much stress they were constantly under, and he couldn’t afford to tangle things up and confuse their relationships for a fling. 

Yes, he resented the twins a little for having something steady, constant, and meaningful where he had next to nothing. He sat in that feeling for a few moments, examined it, and exhaled. Most of it left him. A seed of it stayed rooted in his chest, but he would be sure to keep an eye on it and not let it grow. He didn’t hate them and didn’t want to. They were happy. He could be happy for them, and he would be once everything felt a little more normal. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY SOME TWINFUCKING! YAY! This was a fun one to write. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you liked it, or if you hated it. Attention feeds me and you have to try really hard to hurt my feelings. I'm not going to take hate lying down, but you're not going to hurt me.


	5. The one where Lup dies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm a bit late. I forgot what day it was. Next week's might also be a bit late because I don't have it written yet and I'm a really slow writer.

“He’s in shock.” 

“Oh hell, he’s bleeding.” 

“Where?” 

“Head somewhere. That’s a lot of blood.” 

“What happened to his hands?” 

“Get him on the table.” 

“Found it. Left ear.” 

“Where are the rest of you?” 

“There was an attack-” 

“Hold him still. Oh merciful Pan, I call upon thee-” 

“-at least thirty of them. We had to run. Lup and Davenport-” 

“Magnus, your eye-” 

“-any point in going back?” 

“-too many-”

“-Davenport-”

“-Lup-”

“They’re gone.” 

 

* * *

 

 

Taako woke up, stretched, and spent his usual inordinate amount of time examining his closet. Skirt or pants today? It was cold, so that limited his choices a bit. Most of his skirts were short and flirty, not ideal for going out in the snow. The ship was warm though. Maybe he would just stay inside today, dress however he wanted. 

Pants, he decided. Maybe he would go tight-tight, really show off what his mamma gave him. Did he still have-

His hand stuttered and he stopped. No, of course he didn’t still have the pinstriped pants. They had been packed away with everything else. Stupid thought. He would go with a skirt, something full bodied and flirty. Petticoats were in on this plane, right? Why was he even asking? Everything was in style when he wore it. He was Taako Taaco, the king of looking good. 

And he wasn’t leaving the ship anyway. It was cold. He hated the cold. Blankets and cocoa were the name of the game today. Blankets, cocoa, and looking good. Nothing wrong with any of those. 

Makeup took a little longer than normal. If he was in the business of looking good today, he was going to do it right. Had to fill in a couple little scars, nothing big or deforming, before he could do some concealer to get rid of the dark circles under his eyes, layer of foundation to deal with the discoloration, contour, blush, and highlighter. He was feeling a big, dramatic eye today. Those were another ten minutes each, and then he had to get his lip liner just right for that cupid's bow mouth that rounded out his look. Perfect. 

Nothing to be done about the hair, but he was learning to live with it. He could survive worse than a bad haircut, and he was sure he’d had worse hair than this. Couldn’t remember it if he had, but there had to have been a time, somewhere, between birth and becoming stylish. That wasn’t worth thinking about, though. 

Breakfast, now breakfast was worth thinking about. It was a waffles sort of day. Waffles and bacon, maybe eggs, if he could keep from burning- No, not eggs. Waffles and bacon were a perfect breakfast. He could make enough for the rest of the crew, easy peasy. It was easier to cook for everyone now that they were down to five. He could do some of his small group recipes and double them instead of having to try to calculate cooking times for triple portions. Easier. Much easier. 

A knock at the door made his ears flick up and he had to grip the edge of his vanity to keep a wave of vertigo from knocking him down. Couldn’t do that anymore. Ears needed to stay down. They went flat again on their own when his mind wandered too close to why half his left ear was missing. That was fine. Not how he wished it would happen, but he got what he wanted. “Come in,” he called. 

Magnus ducked through the doorway. “How are you doing?” he asked, testing the waters. 

“Easy, breezy, beautiful. You know the drill, man chop. Need anything?” 

“Just wanted to see if you were getting up today, or if you wanted some company.” 

“On my way out the door. Thinking breakfast. What do you want in your waffles?” Taako stood, rode out another short wave of vertigo, and breezed past Magnus, who followed him toward the kitchen.

“It’s three in the afternoon.” 

“Late lunch, then. Sandwiches? The plan has been amended to sandwiches.” 

“Taako…” 

“Mmm?” He looked back at Magnus and met his good eye, avoiding the bad one. What bad one? No bad eyes here, nothing to not look at. He looked back at Magnus and met his eye. 

“Sandwiches… sound good. They sound good. Do you need help with anything? I could… put them together for you? If you told me how.” 

“Nah, go sit down, my dude. I could do this with both hands tied behind my back.” He waved his good hand, only a little scarred, for Magnus to go sit. His bad one stayed in a sling, braced and bandaged so he wouldn’t hurt it more trying to use it. The healing powers of Pan were limited on this plane. Merle had done his best, but some things were beyond saving. He was right handed anyway and could do anything and everything important one handed or less. When he couldn’t, mage hands picked up the slack. “What kind of sandwich do you want?” 

“Reuben?” Magnus asked. 

“Done and done.” 

Taako moved on autopilot. Reubens were line-cook work, and he could do that in his sleep. Corned beef, sauerkraut, thousand island, throw it in a pan to get crisp. He flicked on the stove top and the burner clicked to life, a tiny, controlled flame-

Stupid, he could do this in the panini press. He turned the stove off and summoned a mage hand to get it off the highest shelf. No climbing on counters for him these days, not with his ear knocking him over every few days. He shifted the reuben from the pan to the press, nearly dropping it. His hands were shaking. Why were his hands shaking? That was stupid. He slammed the lid of the press down and grabbed his brace to make his hand stop. He was fine. He was  _ just fine.  _

“Taako?” 

There was nothing wrong. He was doing his job, cooking for the crew of the starblaster. He was home. His friends were here. It was fine. There was nothing wrong with the stove; the panini press just worked better. His hands hurt, but they always hurt. Nothing unusual there. 

The smell of ash and fire invaded his mind and he shut his eyes. No. None of that. He was fine. Starblaster. Kitchen. Just fine. Normal. Everything was normal, the way it had been for twelve years now. 

Magnus’s hands were heavy on his arms, and when Taako looked up his mouth was moving. Funny, he wasn’t saying anything, just moving his lips in the shape of words. Vertigo hit again, and then Taako was at the table, sitting down and staring at the wood grain and the scarred patches on his hand, the rough nails, the bandaged missing tip of his littlest finger. All he could think about was the stink of burning things. Wood. Metal. Meat. 

Something touched his shoulder. Magnus.

“Taako?” 

“What’s up, boychic?” 

“The sandwich burned a little.” 

Taako swore under his breath. “I can make a new one. Or you can scrape off the- You can scrape it off if you don’t want to wait.” 

“It’s fine. I’ll scrape off the burnt parts. Are you okay?” 

The fingers on his bad hand twitched, shooting pain up through his shoulder. “Yeah, peachy. Why?” 

“You… blanked out again.” 

“Hmm?” 

Magnus nodded. “About half an hour this time. Are you sure…” 

“Mm. Now that you mention it, I am getting tired. Think I’ll go back to bed, call it an early night.” He stood and stretched. Bed would be easier than this. Nothing happened while he was sleeping and he didn’t have to think. 

“Please-” Magnus started, then choked. 

“You need something?” 

“Just talk to us. Please. I know it’s hard, but we want to help you.” 

“Dunno what you’re talking about, my dude. S’all good in Taako town.” 

“...Okay.” Magnus nodded and forced the worst fake smile Taako had ever seen. “Yeah, okay. Go get some rest, buddy. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

Taako gave him a casual half-salute and went back to his room. All he wanted to do was drop straight into bed, but he made himself take off his makeup, wash his face, get undressed, and lay back down, going through the motions of being a person without thinking too hard about anything. It got easier every day. 

Time awake: slightly less than two hours. 

 

* * *

 

A hand touched Taako’s shoulder lightly. The hand was soft, feminine, with tapered fingers. A voice filtered in, too, but he was too far outside of himself to tell what it was saying or whose it was. It reeled him back in like a fish on a line, gently, careful not to tug too hard or force it when he didn’t want to go. 

“-ko. Taako, wake up,” Lucretia said. 

“‘M ‘wake,” he mumbled, then yawned. Had he been asleep? It didn’t feel like it. He wasn’t groggy and could open his eyes on the first try. Oh yeah, meditation. He tried that instead of sleeping. 

“What time is it?” he asked. 

“Eleven, on Tuesday,” Merle said from the doorway. He had a tray piled high with food and drinks. 

“Thought it was Sunday. That for me?” He stood and tried to shake some feeling back into his legs. It definitely felt like he’d been sitting down for a while. 

“It was Sunday. Now it’s Tuesday. No one has seen you in two days. Have you been in here the entire time?” Lucrecia asked. 

Taako shrugged. “Guess so. Gimme.” He took the tray and flopped down on the couch with it. Overcooked chicken with a watery curry glaze. Limp salad with no tomatoes. Mashed potatoes from a box. It was the most depressing meal he’d ever seen. It was also the only food he’d seen in days, so he wolfed it down without tasting it except to note that it was bland and chewy. Big surprise there. “Have you guys been eating like this since I left?” he asked

“We don’t mind. We’re more worried about you,” she said. 

“You should mind. This is disgusting.” 

She started to say something but changed her mind and sat next to him instead. Her hand was on his shoulder again. “It’ll be good to have you back. Tonight was going to be my turn to cook, and no one wants to see that.” 

“No dip, galpal,” Taako said. A moment of hurt flashed across her face, but it was gone before he could be sure he saw it. “Piece of free advice, leave it to the pros. You can write that one down if you want.” 

“Are you ready to come back out now?” 

He glanced around the room he’d spent the last few days not looking at. It was dull, plain, unlived in. This was going to be his room when the starblaster was built, then they pushed his bed into... the other room and turned them into bunk beds. No one had been in this room for years except to drag his bed back out when the ship reset. Perfect for not thinking, not so great for being conscious. “Yeah, cha boy is back in action.” He stood and grimaced. “Correction, cha boy needs a shower.” 

“Go ahead. We’ll see you in an hour.” And if that wasn’t an accurate estimate of the time it took him to shower, he didn’t know what was. 

Hair flip, finger wave, and he left them standing in an empty room with expressions he was too tired to read. By the time he had a shower running and hot he was sore again in that deep way that got worse the more he tried to fix it. 

Fifteen minutes into his shower, he knew he wasn’t going to finish it. His hair was clean and he had washed the worst of the stink off. So what if he wasn’t completely clean? Human noses weren’t strong enough to tell the difference, and Merle was a dwarf. He always stank of something. Taako sat down in the shower with his legs folded and stared at his knees. There were forty-five minutes before he needed to be anywhere, longer if he lied. He could meditate for that long. Maybe after that he wouldn’t feel so heavy.

 

* * *

 

“Got any of Pan’s blessings to share?” Taako asked Merle. He was tired. He was so tired, but he couldn’t sleep. Hadn’t for days now. Meditation only worked for so long, now that Lucretia and Magnus knew all his hiding spots. They were incessant, and after a few days of it he was too jumpy to calm his mind at all. 

“I might. Let me go check my secret stash,” Merle said in a tone that Taako thought was supposed to be conspiratorial. It was hard to tell with him. 

“My man, literally everyone knows about your stash.” 

_ “Secret stash.”  _

“Whatevs. You got any or not?” 

Merle sighed. “Yeah, I’ll get it. Meet me in my room in five.” 

Taako played along like he didn’t know Merle’s weed was hidden in the hollow base of a standing lamp and went to sit on his dwarf-sized couch. His legs stuck out ridiculously, stretched out long across the floor, because it was that or have his knees hunched up to his nose. The couch reeked of weed and dwarf. It wasn’t a bad smell. Familiar, more than anything. He’d slept on a lot of couches that smelled like this, trading off who slept on the floor, or sometimes curling up tight together in a tiny space when whoever owned the couch was a little more accepting of their then unnamed thing. Taako was too tired to think around Lup, so he slid down another couple inches and rubbed his chest where it ached. 

Merle thunked down next to him before he could ruin his eyeliner and handed him a joint. “By Pan’s grace, Amen.” 

“Yeah. Amen.” Taako closed his eyes and lit it with a tiny summon flame, took a long drag, and held it in while he passed the joint to Merle. After a few seconds he let it out with a long “Fuuuuuuck.” 

“You okay?” Smoke curled out of Merle’s mustache. 

He made a noncommittal noise and took the joint back. 

They stayed like that for a while, silently passing a joint back and forth, until Taako lay down with his head in Merle’s lap and his long legs draped over the arm of the couch. 

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked. 

“About Lup?” 

“My hand is straight fucked, homie. I’m ambidextrous as fuck, yeah, but I was a lefty caster. Haven’t cast anything bigger than a cantrip since-” 

“Since Lup died.” 

_ “Since I messed up my hand,”  _ Taako said over him. “What if I ruin my other hand? I would be… I’d be fucking  _ useless.  _ Useless and… and-” And he was a kid again, one wrist held straight in a splint and his other hand wrapped in a dirty bandage, sitting by the side of the road and watching the caravan drive away without him because he couldn’t cook, and if he couldn’t cook he didn’t have a place there. Didn’t have a place anywhere. His hand burned when he clenched it so he wouldn’t cry. It didn’t help. There were tears in his eyes, threatening to fall. 

“It’s okay,” a soft voice murmured. He wasn’t thinking about the voice or its owner. Thinking around it was hard. He wanted it. He wanted it so much, but it hurt in a way he couldn’t live through the way he could a broken wrist or some burns. 

“Give me your hand. It’s okay. Shh, Taako. It’s okay.” Gentle hands were pulling his broken one away from his chest and unwrapping the bandages that held it straight. They were warm and soothing and so, so careful with him. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about whose hands those were or why they felt so good. The caravan was gone. His job was gone. He had fucked it all up again and-

Then there was a wet snap that Taako felt more than heard and an explosion of pain rocketed him away from the road and back to the couch with Merle. 

“Shit!” His hand. Fucking hell,  _ his hand.  _ “Ah, fuck,  _ fuck _ ,  _ nnnh _ . What the fuck are you doing to my hand?” 

Merle was holding it and smoothing Taako’s finger, his broken fucking finger, straight along a new break he’d made over the old one. “Fixing it. Hold still.” He said a quick prayer to Pan over the straightened finger and slow warmth seeped in, chasing away the burning, throbbing pain. It still hurt, fuck did it still hurt, but Taako could think past it again.

“How do you feel?” Merle asked. 

How. How did he feel. Pain, definitely, dull aches everywhere and a bright, immediate burn in his hand drowning the rest out like screaming over white noise. He was breathing like he’d just sprinted a mile and his heart was hammering against his ribs hard enough to hear it over the roaring in his ears. Everything felt razor-sharp, hyper-focused, and  _ real  _ in a way it hadn’t since Lup died. The thought came faster than he could think around her. Loss ached inside him, but his hand was so much worse that he didn’t notice for more than a moment. 

“Good,” he panted. “Do it again.” 

Merle laughed. “See how that one sits for a few days first.” 

“Taako wasn’t asking.” 

He cradled Taako’s mangled hand in both of his like it was made of glass and gently bent the healed finger at the first joint, making Taako curl down and hiss out a curse. It hurt like a pin driving through his knuckle, but it bent. That was more than the rest of his hand could do. 

“See how it sits,” Merle said again.

“‘Kay. ‘Cha boy can do that.  _ Fuck.”  _ He wiped the tears from his face and lay back down, trying to settle. Merle took his hand back and wrapped clean, cushioning gauze around the crooked ones again. The newly healed one got to stay out and open to the air. Bending it still hurt, a bright white pain that kept him present and awake, but it felt a little better each time. He would try not to do that too much, really savor what he had until he could convince Merle to break another one of his fingers. Fuck, it sounded messed up when he said it like that. 

 

The next day dawned bright and early and Taako dawned with it. He was up, dressed, and making breakfast before anyone else was awake. 

“Quiche!” he announced when Lucretia wandered in, her IPRE robe thrown on over owl pajamas. 

Her smile when she saw him was real. That was a novelty these days. “It smells delicious. How do you feel?” 

“Perf and a half. Thinking about going out today, see the sights, meet some people, maybe get laid.” 

She choked on her coffee. “What?” 

“Taako has been alone for too long. The engine thing runs on relationships, right? Time to go make some bonds or whatever,” he said flippantly. 

“Are you sure you’re… okay?” 

“Luce, hon, look at me. I’m fine. I also have not gotten any in a  _ month.  _ If you stand between me and getting some tail it will be the uncoolest thing you have done in your entire nerd life.” 

“If you’re sure,” she said cautiously. “We’ll park the ship nearby in case you need to come back suddenly. There’s a field about half a mile outside of town that should work. I’ll set us down there after breakfast.” 

 

The streets of Rogueport were bustling, exactly what Taako needed. Magnus and Merle decided to come along, which wasn’t exactly what he needed, but he was able to live with it for a chance to get out of the ship for once. Magnus wanted to stay close in case he lost his balance and needed help. Merle was just bored. Whatever. He could lose them any time he wanted. 

Taako and Merle passed a weapon shop near the port end of Rogueport and Magnus glued himself to the window and looked inside like a kid on candlenights. Since his time on the animal planet he took every chance he got to try out new weapons, always looking for the thing that would push him that next step. It had become a minor obsession. He wanted, no, needed to see the swords.

“Taako’s good out here,” Taako said. 

Magnus looked between him and the door of the shop, frowning. 

“Go ahead,” Merle said. “I’ll keep an eye on him.” 

“Thank you! Won’t be two seconds.” He picked Merle up and bear-hugged him before running into the shop. 

“Hey, Merle, can I borrow your stone of far speech? I want to ask Barold to check the oven real quick. Can’t remember if I turned it off this morning.” 

“Sure, one sec.” He rifled through the pockets of his cargo shorts and came up with a handful of loose change, some hard candies stuck together, and no stone. “Huh. Coulda sworn.” 

“Bag maybe?” Taako nodded at the knapsack on Merle’s back. 

He pulled it off and dug through it, pushing things around in his overstuffed bag. “Hold on,” he said. Digging deeper, he started pulling things out and dropping them on the ground at his feet in a little pile. It got higher as his bag got emptier until he was standing with an empty bag and everything he thought he would need for a day in a waist high pile on the street. “Can’t find it. Sorry.” 

Taako was long gone. 

Simple prestidigitation turned his cloak from blazing red to black, and a minor illusion lightened his skin, darkened his hair, and shortened his ears to human size. He caught up to a large group walking fast and blended in with them. They were going south, away from the port. He split off from them in a town square and fell in behind another clump of people going east much more slowly, changing his hair from brown to red in between. 

There was a decent looking tavern right on the edge of a seedier part of town that Taako slipped into when he was sure no one was watching him. He snagged a hat off a hat rack near the door and mashed it down so it covered his hair and pressed his ears down flat. It made him lose his balance and have to take an extra step to the side, but he kept going and it was fine. He could lose the illusion at any time, and “dark skin, blond hair, missing half an ear,” was too much of an identifying description for Taako’s tastes. 

He sat at the bar, ordered a drink, and asked “Anyone play cards around here?” 

“Back room,” the bartender got him a drink and pointed him to a door on the far end of the bar. 

“Thanks.” 

The back room was small, smoky, and crammed full with a table of dwarves playing something that looked like poker. “I think I saw a painting like this once.” Taako said. “Deal me in.” 

“You play?” A one-eyed dwarf asked. He had a fake golden eye with a ruby taking the place of the iris. 

“I’ll figure it out,” Taako said.

The dwarf grinned and flicked cards in front of him. 

The suits were different, the face cards had different names, and the cards themselves were more ornate than what Taako was used to, but other than that it was five card draw. He played a few bad hands, a couple good ones, and a few more bad, fumbling the cards with only one hand to play with and generally making a fool of himself in front of a group of old, staid dwarves, losing chump change. When he understood their plays and tells he got a little better. Still not good, but he won more than he lost. Every so often he recast illusion under the table so he wouldn’t turn back into an elf.

Taako discarded a few cards and picked some new ones up. “Wait, no, can I undo that one? I threw away the wrong card.” 

“Sorry kid,” the dealer, a dwarf with a cigar who was responsible for most of the smoke in the room, said. “Once the cards hit the table it’s final.” 

“Damn it. Fold.” He slapped his cards down and flicked the emperor of stags up his sleeve. 

Four losing hands later he drew and let his eyebrows rise. “All in,” he said, shoving his pile of coins, mostly silver and a few gold, into the center. The rest of the group was down to nearly nothing, except the dwarf with the gold eye. His neat stack of coins was smaller than Taako’s, but it was all gold.

“Fold.” 

“Fold.” 

“Fold.” 

Taako stared at the one eyed dwarf, challenging him. 

He shoved his stack into the center with Taako’s pile. 

Taako grinned. The dwarf scowled.

“Call,” said the dealer. 

The dwarf laid his cards down. “Straight flush. Pay up, newbie.” 

“Uh huh, yeah, that’s cool and all, but you see,” Taako let his cards fall down in a row. “Royal flush.” 

“Son of a  _ bitch.  _ There’s no way.” 

“Way. Now, if no one minds, cha boy got some money to spend.” He shoved the gold into his bag and threw them a wink before he sashayed out. It would be awhile before they noticed four cards missing from their deck. He would be long, long gone by then, somewhere else, someone else. 

Speaking of, he took a shortcut through an alley, and when he came out the other side he was dusk skinned with a tumble of curly black hair hanging out over the back of an emerald green cloak. He never changed his clothes with magic, other than recoloring. People noticed when your shirt phased through the table or your pants weren’t affected by gravity. As long as no one touched his hair or tried too hard to recognize him he would be fine. He kept the hat and let his ears do their thing. It was hard to tell his race with them covered. He looked like every other ridiculously beautiful humanoid out there, and with some illusions and a bit of makeup he could look like  _ any  _ of them. 

Merle’s stone of far speech heated up in his pocket. He glanced at it and his breath froze in his lungs when he saw the L shining on its surface. It couldn’t be. She was-

He bent his finger inside his sling a couple times to clear his head. Lucretia. It was Lucretia, not her. He turned the stone off and shoved it back in his pocket, shaking his head. It was time to start drinking, like, yesterday. 

Taako found another tavern in a nicer part of town and dropped the illusion on his way in the door. He could never keep them up while he was drunk, and having to answer questions about who he was hiding from and why weren’t on the menu tonight. What was on the menu was beer, liquor, and going home with someone he didn’t know, in that order. 

The bar was barely lit, and with a hat on and his head down Taako blended right in. He got a beer, downed it, got another one, and took it to a corner to sip. People watching was a worthy use of his time. He sat and watched the candles flicker on the tables and the little lives flicker around them, making up stories for the interesting ones. He was here on his break, getting smashed so he didn’t have to deal with a terrible boss sober. She was on the run from the law and hiding out here for the night before she took the first ship to anywhere in the morning. That one, in the opposite corner from him, was doing the same thing he was, whatever that was. Drinking? That was one word for it. 

He bent his finger a few more times and focused on that pain, the taste of his beer -- dark, chocolatey, warm -- and the snippets of conversation he caught. 

“And so  _ I  _ said, ‘you can’t talk to him that way, he’s a man of the lord,’ so  _ she  _ said-” 

“When you think about it, it’s really just a giant ponzi scheme. No, pyramid scheme. What’s the one where they have the three cups?” 

“Shell game, genius,” Taako muttered under his breath. His hand twitched up half an inch and he held it down. No high fives here. He wasn’t nearly drunk enough to think he would get one, but two hundred year old habits were hard to break. That wasn’t even a good one. Where was his head at tonight?

“-cheating. I saw you and your shitty little friend over there.” 

“-so  _ I  _ said, ‘I don’t care who’s father he is, he can’t just go around insulting people,’” 

“-didn’t mean nothing by it, o’ course. He were just a bit soft in the head after what happened with the horse n’ all. Poor boy.” 

_ “Just wandered in. No idea who he is,”  _ a voice said across the room in elvish. He hadn’t heard the language in so long, didn’t have anyone to speak it with on the ship. Lucretia knew a smattering and Barry could string together a few words if Taako needed a laugh, but he hadn’t seen another elf in months. It was a passable elvish accent, too. 

_ “Think he wants some company?”  _ Another voice with a posh accent asked. 

_ “No, but I doubt anyone could stop you doing what you want,”  _ affectionate, a little teasing. 

Taako glanced to the side. They were at the bar, the bartender, human but worldly, and someone he could only see the back of who had a glamour on that made shadows cling to him dramatically. 

_ “What’s he drinking?”  _

_ “Beer. Carlin’s winter lager. He has good tastes.”  _

_ “Mine are better. Two glasses of wine, if you would. Does he look like a red or a white to you?”  _

_ “No way to find out but to ask.”  _

_ “That’s no fun,”  _ amusement _. “Give me two reds. If he doesn’t like it I’ll get him something else and drink his.”  _

The stranger with the glamour brought two glasses of wine to Taako’s table and sat across from him.  _ “You look like a man with a story to tell,”  _ he said, eyes roving across Taako’s injuries. 

He shrugged. “ _ Not really. Got beat up a while ago. Not a whole lot of story to it. I pissed some people off and they caught up to me, and now I’m here.”  _

_ “And now you’re here,”  _ the elf agreed.  _ “I’m Solstice.”  _

_ “Taako. That for me?”  _ He nodded to the wine, glancing back and forth between it and Solstice’s eyes.

_ “If you want it.”  _ He pushed it toward him and leaned back, taking his own and sipping it. 

Taako swirled the glass and sniffed it. It was good wine, probably the best the tavern had, if he was reading the bar right. He tried a sip. Very good wine. Here was a pocket he would have been glad to pick, once upon a time. Now, Taako wasn’t sure what he wanted out of Solstice. 

_ “So what’s the goal here?”  _ he gestured around with the glass.  _ “Or are you just the type to hand out free wine?”  _

_ “Is that so hard to believe?”  _

Taako raised an eyebrow.

Solstice laughed.  _ “Alright, fair. I’ve had an eye on you since you walked in. This seemed as good an excuse as any to talk to you. You look interesting, and I’ve been bored. I’m sure you know how it gets. Eternity is long, and humans are so… temporary.”  _

_ “I hear that.”  _

_ “So do you have a place to stay yet tonight?”  _

Taako laughed. There it was. He had wondered how long it would take Solstice to get to the point. This might have been a record. It was definitely a sober record. He didn’t have a watch to check, but he bet it couldn’t have been more than five minutes since the man sat down, maybe less. Probably less.  _ “You’re going to have to get me a lot drunker than this if you want me to come home with you, my dude.”  _

_ “I do believe I can do that.”  _ Solstice smiled and Taako smiled with him, feeling the bubbling glee of bad decisions welling up in his chest. This was something fun to do for the night, waste some time, form some bonds, break them in the morning. He didn’t pretend it was going to be love, but lust was good enough to get him through a night or two. 

 

They stayed up until they were the only people left in the bar and got a room upstairs for the night, rather than tell each other where they lived. Taako fell asleep naked, drunk, and not thinking about much of anything, wrapped up in Solstice’s arms like he belonged there. Like he belonged anywhere. 

He woke up to Solstice stroking the side of his face with a thumb, barely brushing it, almost enough that he could sleep through it. If it had been anywhere other than the odd, always cold spot on his face he probably would have. His makeup had worn off in the night and now everyone could see what was wrong with his face. 

“What happened?” Solstice asked quietly, not wanting to disturb the near silence of early morning. 

“Birth mark,” Taako lied. It very obviously wasn’t, but Solstice didn’t call him on it. Taako could appreciate a man who knew when not to press. It was a rare trait. “Breakfast?” 

“The kitchen will be closed this early. I doubt we’ll be able to find anything good in town, either. It’s not even dawn. 

“Closed schmosed. Get ready for the best breakfast of your life, beautiful.” He got dressed and washed off the rest of his makeup in a basin of the world’s coldest water. The mottled stripe down the side of his face looked worse in the predawn gray. Dark vision wasn’t doing him any favors. He cast a glamour and looked like his regular self by the time he turned back around to face his… whatever Solstice wanted to call himself in Taako’s life. Friend? Friend. 

“Lovely. Now what’s this about the best breakfast of my life? I’ve had some incredible breakfasts, I’ll have you know. My standards are higher than you might think.” 

They found the tavern’s kitchen on silent feet. Taako picked the lock with a bobby pin and let Solstice in like he owned the place. “Try not to mess anything up. Not in the mood to explain why we decided to play the breaking and entering game.” 

“Don’t be silly. You didn’t break anything. Unlawful entry is a much lighter sentence,” Solstice said. He put back the pan he was examining anyway and found a place to sit. 

“Prepare yourself, my dude. You’re about to see some magic.” 

Taako spent a couple minutes getting familiar with the kitchen itself, finding where everything was and gathering what he needed for eggs benedict. He couldn’t cook with the unconscious ease he found after a few weeks working in a kitchen, but he worked easily and quickly and found places to show off some sweet tricks. He used more mage hands than usual. The only ill effect from that was that a mage hand touched boiling water and exploded into a puff of unpleasant, not quite foul but far from delightful, smelling smoke. The stink lingered until Taako prestidigitationed it into the smell of lilacs, so it worked out in the end. Solstice thought the whole thing was hilarious and had to be shushed before he woke up the entire tavern. Shushing involved Taako taking things off the heat and kissing him quietly while the sun rose through the window. 

“Nice, simple breakfast to start the day,” he said as he plated up. There weren’t any tables in the kitchen, so he and Solstice ate eggs benedict off their knees, sitting on opposite prep counters and giggling at the ridiculousness of the situation between bites. Taako could name a lot of worse breakfasts he’d eaten, and enough worse people he’d woken up with to fill the kitchen. 

 

The distracting, painful high lasted about four days. He shopped, ate, gambled, and drank, anything he could think of to live as much as possible while it still felt worth it. He stayed with Solstice for about half of it. Then he tried to convince Taako to run away with him, take a ship west and not look back. Taako went to pack for the trip, all love and excitement, and as soon as he was out of sight he glamoured up and was on the other side of the city and on his way to wasted with another attractive stranger, all by the time Solstice figured out he wasn’t coming back. He hated breaking hearts -- that was absolutely a lie -- but he couldn’t get into anything permanent. The next man he spent time with understood that and felt the same. Neither of them said anything about it, but he gave Taako an obviously fake name and Taako responded in kind. “Jeff” had an insatiable appetite that “Justin” was more than happy to entertain. He was also rich and willing to spend everything he had on Justin’s whims. Most of what Justin wanted were clothes. He and the man spent two days shopping and eating their way through the town and two nights having sex everywhere they could get away with it in every position either of them knew. 

The third morning Taako woke up and his hand felt fine. Perfect. Still a little achy, but the bright point of pain in his index finger was barely a throb. His mind was everywhere and it all seemed to spiral back to her in the end. She was at the center of all his thoughts and the end destination for everywhere he could think to point them. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling while Jeff moved around the room getting ready. 

“Love, Justin, are you okay?” 

She would have made fun of him for a year for choosing such a shitty human name. Probably would have figured out Jeff’s real name by now too. 

“Do you need anything?” 

Not anything that Jeff could give him. He rolled over in place, lifting himself a little and turning over without taking up any more of the bed. It was wide enough and there was no one else in it to jostle or roll on top of, but old habits died hard. 

“Is there anything I can get for you? Let me help you, love.” 

Of course he was worried. Why wouldn’t he be? This wasn’t normal. Losing the ability to function as a person because he lost someone wasn’t normal. Having another half of himself like this, having her, wasn’t normal. 

Taako listened to Jeff rifle around in his bag for a minute, then say, “Hi, are you one of Justin’s friends? Um, tall elf, blond, half an ear got cut off? Okay, sure. Yeah, he isn’t getting up. Is he okay? Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry. Yeah, I’m still here with him. Inn Roma, West Central street. I can stay with him. Yeah. Yes. See you soon. Ask for Jeff’s room.” 

He sat down next to Taako on the bed and looked at nothing. “I’m so sorry about…” he stopped short. “I lost my grandmother last year. It’s hard.” 

Taako didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He would go away eventually and Taako could go back to sleep. It sounded like someone was coming to get him. Whatever. It wouldn’t hurt any worse on the ship. Jeff started running his fingers silently through Taako’s hair while they waited. It made something in his guts twist and ache, but he didn’t have the words to make him stop, so Jeff kept going until Magnus and Merle got there to take him home. They carried him and his pile of new clothes back to the ship quietly and left him alone to do, he didn’t know what exactly. Rest? Recover? Reset? 

He kept flexing his finger in the sling. It didn’t hurt anymore, not enough to ground him and erase his thoughts, but it reminded him that there was a way. Four days. He had a lot of breaks and only a few months left. He could get through it. 

 

* * *

 

“Almighty Pan,” 

Crack   
“Ah!” 

“I call upon thee,” 

Crack

“Fffff…” 

“To bring light,” 

Cr-crack

“And healing,” 

Crick

“And peace,” 

C-c-c-c-crack

“Ah. Ha... hnnng…” 

“To this poor,” 

Snap

“ _ Nnngh _ ,” 

“Soul in pain.” 

CRACK   
“ _ Fuck _ .” 

“Amen.” 

Taako braced for the next bone to snap. Instead, a warm light spread through his hand, tingling in his rebroken wrist and down his repaired fingers. They still weren’t perfectly straight or very nice to look at, but he could bend all of them most of the way and a couple all of the way. It was worlds better than where he started. Spikes of pain radiated from his wrist in time with his heartbeat, pulsing through his fingertips and up as far as his elbow. Merle put his brace back on and Taako pulled his wrist down to cradle against his chest. He was curled up on his side on Merle’s couch. Now he would lay on the couch for a while, smoke another blunt, fall asleep, and wake up able to be a person again, same as the last however many times they’d done this. Six breaks in his fingers, one and a busted joint in his thumb, two metacarpals, and now the series of breaks in his wrist that they decided to do all at once. Eleven times. He’d had his hand rebroken eleven times. 

“If that lasts less than a week I’ll be surprised,” Merle said. 

“Mmm,” Taako agreed. 

“What are you gonna do when it stops?” 

“Depends. How many more of my fingers do you want to break?” 

“None!” 

“Then I’ll get a hammer and you can heal me when I’m done.” 

“Taako,” Merle started. 

“What’s up, home slice?” 

“You need to face this eventually.” 

“Midsummer is in month, my dude. Taako don’t gotta face shit,” Taako said. He stood and stretched. There went nap time. Pain lanced down his arm and he smiled. That was gonna hurt for a while. Maybe he would see if the gnomes down in the city wanted to play blackjack again. They cheated nearly as much as he did, and trying to out-trick them was just the kind of challenge he wanted to start off what felt like was going to be a good week. 

“Is this really what Lup would have wanted for you?” 

“Dunno. We never got around to talking about what we wanted when one of us kicked it and it wasn’t permanent. Gonna have to talk that one through when she gets back in a month,” Taako said. His good mood was evaporating. It was nap time asap, and then he could ignore Merle for another week, maybe longer. He would hope for longer. 

“That’s not-” 

“Peace.” Taako left before Merle could bluster out whatever had gotten into his head. He had shit to do, shit that didn’t involve listening to a cheap ass fake father figure with nothing going for him but good intentions try to lecture him on shit he didn’t even begin to understand. Taako hadn’t needed a dad in two centuries, and he wasn’t about to start now. 

 

* * *

 

“I miss her too,” Barry said, late one night when he and Taako crossed paths. He was on his way out with an armful of nerd stuff when Taako was just coming in after a six day party spree. It hadn’t been all partying. He took breaks to meditate, but for most of the last 144 hours he had been some amount of drunk, high, naked, or a mixture of the three. He was sober and clothed when he saw Barry, and all he wanted in the world was a proper god damn shower and some sleep, but he was looking at him like he expected an answer.

“Why?” Taako asked. “Because you had a crush on her?” 

Barry opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but closed it before he could get together the guts. “Welcome back. Have a good night,” he said, and squeezed past Taako through the doorway and out into the night. 

“Fuck you too,” Taako said when he was gone. He took his shower, two hours to wash off the built up grime of a week of primitive bathing, and fell into bed, where he lay staring at the ceiling for the better part of an hour. His thoughts were sluggish, but he couldn’t stop them from coming. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her. Her voice echoed in his head in the silence. His chest ached with the lack of her and the bed was cold without her in it. 

Alone wasn’t doing it for him. He wanted to go back to the city and find someone fun to spend the night with, but it was three in the morning. Everyone sane was either asleep or already had someone to make bad choices with. 

Barry was awake. 

The stupidest thought of his life came in the middle of a memory of her mirrored with him to show off what a matched set they were, the way they did when they were bored and playing with someone new. Barry had been their plaything once, years ago, and he’d been able to keep up with them for a night of easy drinking. He’d earned a place in their toybox that night, and then personhood not much later, because Lup liked him enough to care about him and Taako followed her lead. He cared about him, as much as Taako cared about anyone. He’d had twelve years to grow a relationship with him.

And he was awake. 

Taako got up before he could think about it too hard, threw on his IPRE robe, and left the ship in bare feet. The nerd hadn’t gone far. He was a couple hundred feet away in the field with a telescope pointed at the sky and a tiny lamp that made a blinding spot in Taako’s dark vision. He lay down on the ground next to him and stared up at the sky. It was a beautiful night. From where he lay, Taako could see the entire hemisphere of stars. Nostalgia wet his eyes. How many nights had he spent lying like this, wherever the caravan had stopped for the night, naming constellations and telling stories? They’d spent more time looking at the stars than most people had been alive. 

“What’s up?” Taako asked. 

“I’m mapping this planet’s stars to see if there’s any overlap between it and the others we’ve visited. Tonight I’m getting a rough estimate of distance and brightness, and over the next few days I’ll be able to triangulate our rough position in the universe, or at least this galaxy, and then I’ll cross reference it with the other models I’ve made.” 

Taako nodded and hmmed. “Barold, if you had asked me to say the single nerdiest thing I could think of, and given me a week to prepare, it still would have been infinitely cooler than what you just told me.” 

“So you don’t think it’s interesting that we might be traveling between planets in the same universe, or that the multiverse might have locations that overlap? I’ve already found a pretty consistent 2% similarity between every map. Not all the same stars every time, but there’s this one cluster of red giants that shows up over half the time.” 

“It’s like you don’t even know you’re doing it! We’ve unearthed a new species here. Bluejeansicus Dorkius.” He paused for a moment, tired enough to unconsciously wait for a second half to his joke, then clenched his teeth. “I. I’ve discovered a new species.” 

Barry sat down next to him. “You okay?” 

“No. I miss her.” it didn’t even begin to cover it, but it was what a human could understand. They were short-lived, weak-minded, and had the emotional capacity of the average stump. Taako had to dumb it down if he wanted Barry to know what he meant. 

“I do too,” Barry said, like it mattered what he thought. He went back to his astrology shit for a while, bouncing back and forth between staring through the telescope and writing on a huge scroll spread out in the grass with little weights holding the corners down. 

“How did she die?” he asked when he had been sitting and watching the sky for a while, finished writing until the stars moved again. 

It was a hard decision, whether or not to tell him. On the one hand, it wasn’t common knowledge what she could do, or how, and Taako didn’t want to have to go into teacher mode and spend the night explaining new concepts to a human. On the other hand, fuck it. Barry was smart enough to understand with minimal handholding, probably. If he wasn’t, Taako could go back inside. 

“Ever heard of a final spell? Sometimes they’re called last resort spells,” Taako said. 

“I think we went over them in theoretical battle magic. They’re illegal, right?” 

Taako nodded. “Super fuckin’ illegal. Learning one can get you twenty years in the slammer. Teaching them is a death sentence. Writing one down used to be punished with losing a hand, but now I think they just take everything you have and wipe your memory. Lup’s is called Kindle’s Last Resort.” 

“What does it do?” Barry asked, not bothering to hide the awe in his voice.

“Turned her body into a bomb, homie. Every ounce of magic she had left and as much life force as she could draw on without snuffing it, all channeled into the biggest raw evocation spell she could force.” 

Barry was dumbstruck, looking at the sky like he couldn’t believe anyone would willingly do that to themselves. Good. What she did was incredible and deserved recognition, even if it was just from some nerd with a space-fetish. “Is that what happened to, you know,” he indicated his hand and the side of his face. 

“Yeah, shield spell closes right to left, and I was just a second too late. Story of my life, right? Boiling blood,” he touched the burn scar on his face, “and a piece of her hit my hand. Probably her hand. One last high five, right?” 

“That’s… intense.” 

“Right? I’m gonna give her so much shit for this when she gets back. Like hell she gets a cooler death than me.” 

There was a smile in Barry’s voice. “How are you going to one-up her?” 

Taako laughed into the night. “Next time we get surrounded like that I’m sacrificing myself so she can escape. Rorak’s Final Thunderclap. Hundred foot wide pillar of lightning, baby. No survivors.” 

“That sounds bad ass,” Barry said. “Where did you guys learn those?”

“You’d be amazed what you can find when legal isn’t on the menu.” 

Barry nodded. “So how does it work? Do you just dump all your spell slots into one spell? How do you get all the energy to channel at once like that?” 

He was like a kid with a new toy. Taako didn’t want to fucking deal with it, so he shut it down as gently as he could. “Special incant, and like hell I’m teaching it to you, so don’t even ask. You’re the kind of stupid that would want to try it out.” 

“Ouch.” 

“Am I wrong?” Taako asked. 

Barry was silent.

“That’s what I thought. Now, this convo is boring. Tell me more nerd shit.” He closed his eyes and listened to Barry ramble about stars and engines and bonds and whatever, letting the sound wash over him and turn into white noise. 

 

He woke up with his head pillowed on something soft and warm, covered in his cloak, with dew cooling his face. Lup was running her fingers through his hair. He must have been tired, because he didn’t remember falling asleep. Dawn crept through his eyelids, quiet and serene. It would be time to get up and get to work soon, but he could take a second to enjoy the morning with her first.

_ “Love you,”  _ he murmured in Elvish. 

“What?” Barry asked in Common. 

“ _ Fuck _ .” Not Lup. “How long was I asleep?” He sat up and tried to pull his hair up into a knot, but his fingers just ran through the strands and came out empty. Right, short hair. It was damp with dew and stuck together in tiny spikes. 

“Couple hours? I couldn’t move you and didn’t want to leave you alone out here, and then you tried to get in my lap and I couldn’t wake you up so I just kinda, uh…” 

“Breathe, boychic. NBD. Taako’s woken up weirder places than this.” he stood and stretched. “Quick ques’. Why were you playing with cha’ boy’s hair?” 

“It was really soft. Sorry.” 

“S’all good. Welp, it’s been  _ real,  _ but I got shit to do today. Later.” He messed up Barry’s hair in passing. “And… thanks, I guess.” 

“Yeah, any time.” 

 

* * *

 

“Any time,” probably wasn’t literal, Taako weighed in the back of his mind. That tiny voice in his head was the only part of him that cared. 

He’d had a dream, an old dream, where everyone he’d ever known crumbled to ash around him one at a time until he was alone. A hand squeezed his in the darkness and red light. There, at his right, was his reflection, telling him something he couldn’t hear over the burning and screaming. While he watched she turned into ash and blew away in the wind, and he was left with an empty hand stained black. He woke up choking on tears and reached across their bed for someone to ground him in the real world, to whisper a sleepy “it’s okay, shh,” and tell him to go back to sleep, or to pull him close and mumble nothing words against his hair until they were both either awake or asleep, it didn’t matter which. There was no hand in reach on the other pillow, and the realization felt like being stabbed. He scrambled blindly in the dark until his vision adjusted and ended up on his hands and knees, tangled in the covers, alone and gasping through tears. 

Barry had said “Any time.” He hadn’t meant it like that, Taako knew, but he could bluff a misunderstanding better than anyone alive if he had to. He got up, shuffled down the hall, and unlocked Barry’s door with a snap of his fingers. He was asleep and snoring. The sound was real and alive and did something to chase the image of Lup, blackened and terrified, from his mind. He crawled into bed with him and spooned in behind him with his nose pressed into the short fluff of hair at the nape of Barry’s neck. He smelled nice, clean, even though he used the wrong shampoo and it dried his hair out and made it a little rough. Barry didn’t wake up when Taako’s breath ghosted over his skin, or when his good hand tangled in his shirt. He closed his eyes and paid attention to the little things, like the sound of breathing and the way Barry’s chest rose and fell, how his heartbeat felt when he rested his other hand on Barry’s back, and how warm he was. Enough little things made a big thing, and the tiny details of Barry made it so Taako wasn’t alone in the night. 

He didn’t fall back asleep, but he drifted enough to calm his mind. It made for a decent night’s rest, far from the worst he’d ever had, and much better than he thought he would get when he woke up alone. When Barry stopped snoring and his breathing started to speed up, Taako gently unwrapped himself from around him and crept out. He locked the door behind him with another snap of his fingers and was back in his own bed in less than a minute. No one would ever have to know. 

 

Barry was the first one up for breakfast. He came in rubbing his eyes, still in his pajamas with riotous bedhead. Taako was just starting to cook and pointed him to the table so he wouldn’t bother him with a commanding “Sit,” and a flick of his fork. It dripped batter on the floor and he had to find his wand, usually in his braid but he had to leave up his sleeve like some kind of amateur now that he was shorn like a sheep in spring, to magic it up. Barry sat and watched him cook. 

“What do you want in your pancakes?” Taako asked.

“Whatever. I’m not picky.” 

“That’s a lie and we both know it,” Taako said. He’d had Barry turn down more than one meal and eat cereal for dinner because he didn’t like one ingredient. 

“Pecans,” Barry amended. 

“Can do, my dude.” His hand worked again, and that made cooking easier. It was still far from perfect. His grip strength was almost nil and he didn’t have a great range of motion, but he could hold things in place without magic and use his wand for the occasional magical shortcut that he hadn’t been able to for months. It felt good to be able to cook for real again, like all was right with the world for a minute or two. 

“You can come back again tonight,” Barry said when Taako put his pancakes on the table. 

“Hmm?” 

“To sleep, I mean. I don’t mind it.” 

Taako went back to the stove. “No idea what you’re talking about, bubbeleh.” 

“Okay.” Barry stopped talking and that was the end of it. 

 

Barry didn’t say anything when Taako opened his door in the middle of the night a few days later, dressed for sleep and more worn out than he cared to admit. It hadn’t been a long day, but it was a tiring one, and Taako needed to sleep. Actually sleep, not lay in bed and ache emptily for hours before he succumbed to exhaustion. Barry was reading a book by the light of a single candle. His eyes turned up to Taako when the door opened. 

“Not a word,” Taako said. 

Barry’s eyes went back down to his book and he moved over in bed to make space for him. Taako took the offered place, curled up comfortably with his arm around Barry’s soft middle and his face pressed against the clean cotton of his shirt. A broad hand ran through his hair a few times, trying to make it lay straight, then came to rest around the back of his head, a warm, rough weight that grounded Taako in where and when he was, and who with. There was a heartbeat to listen to and slow breathing to match his to. He was asleep before the candle went out. 

 

* * *

 

The hunger started crashing into the planet and Taako didn’t care. He ran back to the ship and got to his station because that’s what was expected of him, not because he felt any real need to escape the pillars of blackness that fell from the sky. He lost his balance and fell on his way there. It didn’t matter. He scrambled back to his feet and made it to the kitchen in time for blast off. The ship took off, leaving the dirt ball of a planet that had taken his sister behind to live or die on its own. They had the light. It would be fine, probably. Everything they knew indicated that the planets where they found the light survived after they left, and even if it didn’t, who cared? He would never see Solstice, Jeff, the dwarves, the gnomes, the humans, or any of the other idiots he’d played with while he was there ever again. They were dust and he was already gone. 

Whiteness washed over him and when it faded he was on the deck of the starblaster, looking out into space, unfamiliar stars, a new planet in the distance. He turned his head, long hair swishing for the first time in months, and saw his reflection do the same to his right. They crashed together, gripping each other harder than they ever had before. His ribs creaked under the pressure of her arms. Lup’s arms. Lup, his sister, his other half, alive and whole and there and real in his arms where he never had to let her go again. 

“Hey big sis,” he said as lightly as he could, like he wasn’t about to cry. 

“Hey lil’ bro.” Her voice was like hearing music after a decade of silence. 

He laughed, high and broken, delighted and in pain, and she dragged him belowdecks to their room, where they curled up and he told her everything. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehehehe. This is one of my favorite chapters. Leave a comment if you liked it, or if you hated it. Attention feeds the beast and makes me want to write more.


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